What We Strive For and Value

Humans recognize that their significant others want and expect them to be and to become a certain kind of person, and they accept these goals and standards in their own self-regulation (internalization). This is a critical and central aspect of the shared reality motivation that makes humans special motivationally, and “special” in this case means possessing something distinctive and important. Within positive and within negative child–caretaker interactions, there are different kinds of interactions that create different kinds of shared realities. One kind of interaction creates a promotion shared reality that the world is a place where nurturance, mastery, and growth can occur: Your life can get better and better. Another kind of interaction creates a prevention shared reality that you have to work to maintain or restore safety and security: Your life will remain fine if you are careful. In addition to creating different types of shared goals and standards, different kinds of child–caretaker interactions create shared goals and standards that vary in their strength. The stronger the goals and standards, the more likely a person is to attain them, but the more that person will suffer if he or she fails to attain them. And how strongly people engage in an activity and “feel right” about it depends on whether they pursued a goal in a manner that fits their goal orientation—in an eager way for promotion and in a vigilant way for prevention. Fit intensifies the value of people’s decisions and their achievements, making positives more positive and negatives more negative.

How We Strive

Much of our lives is spent experiencing our journey in pursuit of goals. Indeed, it can be argued that how we strive is our life. And, just as what we strive for involves shared realities with others, how we strive also involves shared realities with others. We learn from others what are the appropriate ways to pursue particular goals, just as toddlers early on learn the shared practices of their family and community. The importance of shared reality in how we go about our daily lives is evident not only in our customs or rituals but also in the strategies we choose when pursuing goals. Individuals with shared promotion goals, which is relatively common in the United States, are more likely to pursue their goals in an extroverted, eager manner. Individuals with shared prevention goals, which is relatively common in Japan, are more likely to pursue their goals in a conscientious, vigilant manner. The promotion and prevention shared realities define who we are motivationally: what counts as success or failure and its motivational significance; how we see the world (global and abstract versus local and concrete); and how we deal with the world (emphasize speed and innovative thinking versus accuracy and analytical reasoning). It even impacts when we prefer more or less risky options when making decisions: Prevention prefers the risk option that best maintains or restores the (nonloss) status quo, whereas shared promotion prefers the risk option that best allows progress beyond the (nongain) status quo.

Childhood Development of Shared Reality

The changes in shared reality that happen while human children develop are fascinating. Beginning in infancy, children pass through different phases of development when new modes of sharing reality emerge that change how they relate to others around them. Each new shared reality mode changes the lives of children, as well as those lucky enough to be with them when it happens. This chapter describes the first two phases that emerge: shared feelings and shared practices. Infants as young as six months will see something that interests them and then try to share that interest by having their caretaker also pay attention to it. Together, they share that this is something that is worthy of their attention: shared relevance. Infants will also check their caretaker’s emotional reaction to something to learn how they should feel about it. Is this something to approach or avoid? The next phase that emerges is shared practices. Toddlers create shared realities with their caretakers about how to carry out different activities: This is how we do it. These shared practices and routines include not only how to dress, eat, and go to the toilet but also what name to use when referring to a particular category (e.g., “dog” for the four-legged barking animal if you speak English). During this “naming period,” children actively work to share reality by asking others to tell them the names of things. Sharing practices connects children to their community. But it begins negative reactions to out-groups who share different practices.

Introduction

What makes us human? Why do humans deal with the world in the ways that we do? The usual answer is that it is our intelligence. When it comes to intelligence, we believe we are special. When it comes to motivation, we believe we are basically the same as other animals. But human motivation is also special. This book describes why human motivation is special and how it makes us who we are. Humans want to experience that their feelings, beliefs, and concerns are shared by others. They want to experience that what matters to them about the world—what objects, events, and issues are worthy of attention—also matters to other people. And what humans share with others is what they experience to be real. It is a shared reality. Our shared reality motivation defines who we are. It is the best of us and the worst of us. On the one hand, our shared realities connect us to close others, create common interests, and make life meaningful. They become the truth about what to feel and what to believe. On the other hand, because of this, we distrust, and even fear, the members of any other group who have different shared realities. For better and worse, our shared realities profoundly affect our everyday lives: how we feel, what we know, our attitudes and opinions, our sense of self, what we strive for and how we strive, and how we get along with others.

How We Get Along

It doesn’t take much of a difference between groups to make in-group–out-group discrimination occur. High schoolers can discriminate on the basis of preference for the paintings of Klee versus Kandinsky. Third-grade children can discriminate on the basis of eye color. The two social identification mechanisms that contribute to discrimination relate to the epistemic and social relational motives underlying shared reality creation. By accentuating similarities within social categories and differences between them, we can order, simplify, and make sense of our complex social world. This epistemic motive, however, is not enough to account for the discrimination of favoring your own group over the other group—in-group favoritism. This comes from the social relational motive of creating a shared reality with others, with wanting a positive connection to those with whom you have a shared reality and experience yourself and others as belonging to the same social category—the we of social identification. Having a common social identity with other in-group members can make interactions relatively smooth, effortless and pleasant, but it does not necessarily make them more productive because the group members often discuss what they share with one another rather than what they don’t share. The roles that we enact are also shared realities that can bias our perception of the world by determining what is relevant and significant. Shared reality perceptions are also critical in close relationships where partners must experience that they are a positive unit who sees and responds to the world in the same way.

Epilogue

The current conflicts happening around the world between people with different political views are very disturbing. They illustrate the trade-offs from shared reality that are described in this book. Each political group is stronger from its shared feelings, beliefs, and opinions. But the differences between these shared realities are tearing us apart. What can we do about it? We must find a way to create shared realities between different political groups. Where do we begin? We begin with shared relevance. Shared relevance emerges in the beginning of shared reality when infants and their caretakers signal their agreement that something is worthy of their attention. It connects the caretaker and child even if their reactions to the thing are not the same. The “mirroring” practiced by therapists with their clients communicates that the issues that matter to the client also matter to the therapist, even if the therapist does not agree with the client’s feelings on the issues. It creates a connection and trust between therapist and client. Similarly, by recognizing that they at least agree on what issues matter and deserve attention (e.g., child education), two people from different political groups can begin to connect with and trust one another. They can feel closer to each other than to a third person who thinks it is a waste of time to think about these issues because they don’t matter. We want to move beyond shared relevance to shared attitudes and beliefs, but shared relevance provides the foundation to build upon.

What We Know

“I know it when I see it.” That’s what we think. But mostly we know what our shared realities have taught us, and tell us, to know. Not only do we learn from others the names for things in the world, we learn the names for traits to characterize people. We learn which traits are relevant and relevance makes these traits salient and accessible. This makes it more likely that we will see these traits in others, such as seeing people behave in a “stubborn” way even for behaviors that are ambiguous or vague. Our perceptions of a person’s behaviors can also be biased by how that person was previously characterized by someone else, such as saying this person is “warm” or “cold.” A car in an accident will be seen as going faster if someone describes the event as “smashed” versus “hit.” People who have a conversation about an event will converge over time in what they remember about the event. Group members will also converge in their judgments, creating consensual social norms. And groups can create these shared realities about the world even when the consensual belief is false. Stereotypes are an example of this. They can overgeneralize the negative characteristics of a social category, describing members as having traits that are rare and/or no more prevalent than in other social categories. Even worse, the stereotypes are treated as being simply descriptions of reality when they are actually evaluations based on the in-group’s values or standards (ethnocentrism).

Sharing Is Believing

We all know that “seeing is believing.” Only physical evidence is truly convincing to us. But consider the following. When constructing a message for their audience, communicators tailor the information they have about something, like another person’s behaviors, so that their message matches the attitude of their audience toward that target person—message tuning. They produce more positive descriptions of the target’s behaviors for an audience who likes the target and more negative descriptions of the same target behaviors for an audience who dislikes the target. But here’s the thing: Their own subsequent memory of the target’s behaviors does not match the behaviors that they saw but, instead, matches what they said about the behaviors. Rather than “seeing is believing,” it is “saying is believing.” But that’s not all. This “saying-is-believing” effect depends on the goal of the message tuning. If the message is tuned toward the audience’s attitude to obtain a favor from the audience or some other ulterior motive, then the “saying-is-believing” effect is eliminated. The goal of the message tuning needs to be to create a shared reality with the audience. Rather than “saying is believing,” it is “sharing is believing.” Sharing is believing strengthens our connections and enhances our trust with in-group members. But, by building separate “bubbles” of in-group communication, it can also create distrust and conflicts with out-group members. Moreover, although people experience their shared beliefs as being the objective truth, they can be distortions like those in the tuned messages and subsequent memory.

Our Attitudes and Opinions

Humans want our attitudes and opinions to be shared realities with others and prefer to interact with others who share them. To create shared realities, we are also open to learning from others and being influenced by others about what our attitudes and opinions should be. And, once we have created these shared realities, we treat them as if they were objective facts. Even subjective preferences, such as liking pistachio ice cream, become objective facts: pistachio ice cream is wonderful. We learn from others what to like and dislike and can even learn to like something, such as eating sour and spicy food, that is not natural to like. Agents of attitude change can have their influence through their audience wanting to have a relationship or common identity with them or their being perceived as experts or credible, which directly relates to the social relational and epistemic motives for creating shared reality. A group can also be used as a guide for individuals’ attitudes and opinion—a positive reference group—even when those individuals do not belong to the group, such as “the rich and famous.” Given this, as we move from one group to another, such as living with family and then living far away from home in a college community, our political attitudes and moral opinions can change. And having attitudes or opinions emerge from group conversations can make them more extreme while also increasing their experienced objectivity. Such polarization and “false objectivity” contributes to group conflicts.

Our Sense of Self

Of all the objects you know and have beliefs about, you are the object you pay most attention to and want to know best. And, when it comes to sharing beliefs and opinions about the world with others, you are the object in the world that you most want your significant others to share your beliefs and opinions about who you are. How do individuals learn to know who they are? It begins with children learning what it is about themselves and what they do that determines how others respond to them as an object in the world (shared social contingent self). They share with others what is relevant about them, what matters. They share what to expect of themselves in terms of their skills and abilities (shared expectant self). They share with others what goals they should pursue and what standards they should use to evaluate themselves (shared monitored self). Depending on whether their shared goals and standards are promotion or prevention, people inflate or deflate their self-esteem to maintain their eagerness or vigilance, respectively. And they are motivated to verify the truth of shared beliefs about themselves for both positive and negative self-attributes. And a big part of our sense of self are the social identities that we embrace. Individuals create a shared reality we with groups that is so powerful that they will die for it. Like a “band of brothers,” there can be a social fusion with a political group that has the power of family.