Human self as information agent: Functioning in a social environment based on shared meanings

Review of General Psychology

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2018, Pages 36-47

  Baumeister, Roy F ^a,b   Maranges, Heather M ^b   Vohs, Kathleen D ^c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

^b FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

Author keywords

Communication; Culture; Information agent; Self; Shared reality

Indexed keywords

EID: 85021721385     PISSN: 10892680     EISSN: 19391552     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1037/gpr0000114     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Allport, G. W., Postman, L. (1947). The psychology of rumor. Oxford, UK: Holt.
2. Baumeister, R. F. (1982). A self-presentational view of social phenomena. Psychological Bulletin, 91, 3-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909 .91.1.3.
3. Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
4. Baumeister, R. F. (2005). The cultural animal: Human nature, meaning, and social life. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167030.001.0001.
5. Baumeister, R. F., Ainsworth, S. E., Vohs, K. D. (2015). Are groups more or less than the sum of their members? The moderating role of individual identification. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, e137. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X15000618.
6. Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5, 323-370. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323.
7. Baumeister, R. F., Masicampo, E. J. (2010). Conscious thought is for facilitating social and cultural interactions: How mental simulations serve the animal-culture interface. Psychological Review, 117, 945-971. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0019393.
8. Baumeister, R. F., Reynolds, T., Winegard, B., Vohs, K. D. (in press). Competing for love: Applying sexual economics theory to mating contests. Journal of Economic Psychology.
9. Baumeister, R. F., Zhang, L., Vohs, K. D. (2004). Gossip as cultural learning. Review of General Psychology, 8, 111-121. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1037/1089-2680.8.2.111.
10. Beswick, D. (2017). Cognitive motivation: From curiosity to identity, purpose and meaning. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
11. Boothby, E. J., Clark, M. S., Bargh, J. A. (2014). Shared experiences are amplified. Psychological Science, 25, 2209-2216. http://dx.doi.org/10 .1177/0956797614551162.
12. Boyd, R., Richerson, P. J. (2005). The origin and evolution of cultures. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
13. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
14. Cialdini, R. B., Levy, A., Herman, C. P., Evenbeck, S. (1973). Attitudinal politics: The strategy of moderation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 25, 100-108. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0034265.
15. Corballis, M. C. (2009). The evolution of language. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1156, 19-43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749- 6632.2009.04423.x.
16. Corriveau, K. H., Harris, P. L., Meins, E., Fernyhough, C., Arnott, B., Elliott, L., de Rosnay, M. (2009). Young children's trust in their mother's claims: Longitudinal links with attachment security in infancy. Child Development, 80, 750-761. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624 .2009.01295.x.
17. Csibra, G., Gergely, G. (2009). Natural pedagogy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 148-153. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2009.01.005.
18. Csibra, G., Gergely, G. (2011). Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, Biological Sciences, 366, 1149-1157. http://dx.doi.org/10 .1098/rstb.2010.0319.
19. De Dreu, C. K. W., Nijstad, B. A., van Knippenberg, D. (2008). Motivated information processing in group judgment and decision making. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12, 22-49. http://dx.doi .org/10.1177/1088868307304092.
20. de Waal, F. (2001). The ape and the sushi master: Cultural reflections of a primatologist. New York, NY: Basic Books.
21. DiFonzo, N., Bordia, P. (2007). Rumor psychology: Social and organizational approaches. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/11503-000.
22. Duarte, J., Crawford, J. T., Stern, C., Haidt, J., Jussim, L., Tetlock, P. E. (2015). Political diversity will improve social psychological science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38, 130, 1-13.
23. Dunbar, R. I. (1996). Groups, gossip, and the evolution of language. In A. Schmitt, K. Atzwanger, K. Grammer, & K. Schäfer (Eds.), New aspects of human ethology (pp. 77-89). New York, NY: Springer.
24. Echterhoff, G., Higgins, E. T., Groll, S. (2005). Audience-tuning effects on memory: The role of shared reality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 257-276. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.3.257.
25. Echterhoff, G., Higgins, E. T., Levine, J. M. (2009). Shared reality: Experiencing commonality with others' inner states about the world. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 496-521. http://dx.doi.org/10 .1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01161.x.
26. Feinberg, M., Willer, R., Stellar, J., Keltner, D. (2012). The virtues of gossip: Reputational information sharing as prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 1015-1030. http://dx.doi .org/10.1037/a0026650.
27. Gadamer, H.-G. (1975). Truth and method (J. Weinsheimer & G. Marshall, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum.
28. Gallup, G. G., Jr. (1970). Chimpanzees: Self-recognition. Science, 167, 86-87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.167.3914.86.
29. Gazzaniga, M. S. (2008). Human: The science behind what makes your brain unique. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
30. Gilovich, T., Griffin, D., Kahneman, D. (2002). Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808098.
31. Gummerum, M., Leman, P. J., Hollins, T. S. (2014). How do children share information in groups? Developmental Psychology, 50, 2105- 2114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037144.
32. Harmon-Jones, E., Harmon-Jones, C. (2007). Cognitive dissonance theory after 50 years of development. Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie, 38, 7-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1024/0044-3514.38.1.7.
33. Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., Vohs, K. D. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 88-110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327957 pspr1002_1.
34. Hertwig, R., Engel, C. (2016). Homo ignorans: Deliberately choosing not to know. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11, 359-372. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691616635594.
35. Higgins, E. T., Rholes, W. S., Jones, C. R. (1977). Category accessibility and impression formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 141-154. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1031(77)80007-3.
36. Hinsz, V. B., Tindale, R. S., Vollrath, D. A. (1997). The emerging conceptualization of groups as information processors. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 43-64.
37. Hoppitt, W. J., Brown, G. R., Kendal, R., Rendell, L., Thornton, A., Webster, M. M., Laland, K. N. (2008). Lessons from animal teaching. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 23, 486-493. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.tree.2008.05.008.
38. Karlsson, N., Loewenstein, G., Seppi, D. (2009). The ostrich effect: Selective attention to information. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 38, 95-115. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11166-009-9060-6.
39. Klein, N., Epley, N. (2015). Group discussion improves lie detection. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112, 7460 -7465. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas .1504048112.
40. Koenig, M. A., Clément, F., Harris, P. L. (2004). Trust in testimony: Children's use of true and false statements. Psychological Science, 15, 694-698. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00742.x.
41. Koenig, M. A., Harris, P. L. (2005). Preschoolers mistrust ignorant and inaccurate speakers. Child Development, 76, 1261-1277. http://dx.doi .org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2005.00849.x.
42. Kuhn, D., Shaw, V., Felton, M. (1997). Effects of dyadic interaction on argumentive reasoning. Cognition and Instruction, 15, 287-315. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1207/s1532690xci1503_1.
43. Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J. (2007). On the compatibility of terror management theory and perspectives on human evolution. Evolutionary Psychology, 5, 476-519. http://dx.doi .org/10.1177/147470490700500303.
44. Larson, J. R., Foster-Fishman, P. G., Keys, C. B. (1994). Discussion of shared and unshared information in decision-making groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 446-461. http://dx.doi.org/10 .1037/0022-3514.67.3.446.
45. Loewenstein, G. (1994). The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 75-98. http://dx.doi.org/10 .1037/0033-2909.116.1.75.
46. Mercier, H., Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 57-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X10000968.
47. Nurmsoo, E., Robinson, E. J. (2009). Children's trust in previously inaccurate informants who were well or poorly informed: When past errors can be excused. Child Development, 80, 23-27. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01243.x.
48. Paulhus, D. L., Harms, P. D., Bruce, M. N., Lysy, D. C. (2003). The over-claiming technique: Measuring self-enhancement independent of ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 890-904. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.890.
49. Povinelli, D. J. (2000). Folk physics for apes: The chimpanzee's theory of how the world works. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univerisity Press.
50. Povinelli, D. J. & Eddy, T. J. (1996). What young chimpanzees know about seeing. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development (Vol. 61, No. 2, Serial No. 247).
51. Seyfarth, R. M., Cheney, D. L., Marler, P. (1980). Vervet monkey alarm calls: Semantic communication in a free-ranging primate. Animal Behaviour, 28, 1070 -1094. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0003-3472(80) 80097-2.
52. Shapiro, J. P., Baumeister, R. F., Kessler, J. W. (1987). Children's awareness of themselves as teasers and their value judgments of teasing. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 64, 1102. http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pms .1987.64.3c.1102.
53. Shteynberg, G. (2015). Shared attention. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 579-590. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691615589104.
54. Sloman, S. A., Rabb, N. (2016). Your understanding is my understanding: Evidence for a community of knowledge. Psychological Science, 27, 1451-1460. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797616662271.
55. Stasser, G., Titus, W. (1985). Pooling of unshared information in group decision making: Biased information sampling during discussion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1467-1478. http://dx.doi .org/10.1037/0022-3514.48.6.1467.
56. Suddendorf, T. (2013). The gap: The science of what separates us from other animals. New York, NY: Springer.
57. Tamir, D. I., Mitchell, J. P. (2012). Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109, 8038-8043. http://dx .doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1202129109.
58. Tomasello, M. (2014). A natural history of human thinking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/9780674 726369.
59. Tomasello, M. (2016). A natural history of human morality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/9780674 915855.
60. Tomasello, M., Kruger, A. C., Ratner, H. H. (1993). Cultural learning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, 495-511. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ S0140525X0003123X.
61. von Hippel, W., Trivers, R. (2011). The evolution and psychology of self-deception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 1-16. http://dx.doi .org/10.1017/S0140525X10001354.
62. Webster, J., Brown, G., Zweig, D., Connelly, C. E., Brodt, S., Sitkin, S. (2015). Beyond knowledge sharing: Withholding knowledge at work. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 27, 1-37.
63. Wheeler, B. C. (2009). Monkeys crying wolf? Tufted capuchin monkeys use anti-predator calls to usurp resources from conspecifics. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 276, 3013-3018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2009.0544.
64. Wittenbaum, G. M., Hubbell, A. P., Zuckerman, C. (1999). Mutual enhancement: Toward an understanding of the collective preference for shared information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 967-978. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.5.967.