Creating shared reality about ambiguous sexual harassment: The role of stimulus ambiguity in audience-tuning effects on memory.

Pierucci, Sabrina; Echterhoff, Gerald; Marchal, Cynthie; Klein, Olivier

doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2014.07.007

Cited by 22 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…When the participants were provided with testimonies about a supervisor’s ambiguous behavior toward a female employee, their memory was tuned according to the attitude of the co-witness (the audience). When other information references (such as information of eventual clear-cut harassment) were provided, participants did not tune their memory ( Pierucci et al, 2014 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is one of the four necessary conditions that underlie shared reality. Previous studies have demonstrated that the influence of the audience-tuning on communicators' memory is driven by motivation (Echterhoff et al, 2005(Echterhoff et al, , 2009bPierucci et al, 2013Pierucci et al, , 2014. Specifically, shared reality has a certain degree of selectivity, and people are more willing to share reality with the people they like.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Audience-Tuning Effect of Negative Stereotypes in Communication

Zhao

Huang

et al. 2021

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Shared reality theory states that people allow others to influence their own judgments and behaviors when a shared reality is achieved (Hardin and Higgins, 1996; Echterhoff et al., 2009a). Based on this theory, this research has explored how audience attitude affects the communicator’s memory of negative stereotype-related information in interpersonal communication. Two experiments have been conducted, using the negative stereotypes of Chinese “rich second-generation” as the research materials. The results show that the audience-tuning effect of negative stereotypes does in fact occur in interpersonal communication. The participants have tuned their descriptions of both stereotype-related and neutral information to suit their audience’s attitude toward the target. The audience-tuning affects the participants’ recall valence of stereotype-related information while not affecting the recall valence of neutral information. The relational motivation moderates the effect of audience-tuning on the communicator’s memory of stereotype-related information. Only participants who communicated with a desired audience displayed an audience-congruent memory bias of stereotype-related information. The results of this research reveal the bidirectional nature of stereotype-sharedness in interpersonal communication. In actual interpersonal communication, the audience could express a positive attitude toward the target who suffers from negative stereotypes, and the communicator would then convey and recall the stereotype-related information in a more positive manner based on the audience-tunning effect, which could ultimately help to decrease negative stereotypes in communication.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Audience-Tuning Effect of Negative Stereotypes in Communication

Zhao

Huang

et al. 2021

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Rotundo et al, 2001) suggests that it is quite likely for individuals to have encoded their ambiguous, initial experiences of SH in an ill-formed manner. Furthermore, "audience turning," in which individuals' initial semantic encoding of an event is shaped to align with how they believe a relevant audience's opinion or attitude toward the event will be (Pierucci et al, 2014), provides a theoretical explanation for the reinterpretation of SH memories. Pierucci et al (2014) theorized that an ambiguous understanding of a potentially threatening event, such as SH, creates a need for an epistemic, shared interpretation of it.…”

Section: Theoretical Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-profile sexual misconduct media triggers sex harassment recall and reinterpretation

Amber

Dinh

Lewis

et al. 2019

EDI

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore a possible effect of #MeToo media on individuals’ personal recall and reinterpretation of sex harassment (SH) experiences. The authors experimentally examine how exposure to high-profile stories of sexual misconduct triggers memories and reinterpretation of one’s own past SH experiences. Design/methodology/approach Using a sample of 393 US adults, participants were randomly assigned to read one of four media passages, two of which were news stories or transcripts of high-profile cases of sexual harassment or misconduct (e.g., the Trump Access Hollywood transcript), then completed the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ) and follow-up questions about how the media impacted their memory of their prior SH experiences. Findings Sexual misconduct media stories, compared to control conditions, indirectly predicted self-report of past SH (SEQ) through both remembering and reinterpreting one’s past experiences. Gender and political ideology moderated the indirect effects such that the effects of the media stories were stronger for women and for those higher on progressive political ideology. Practical implications This study experimentally demonstrated what has publicly been assumed to be a driving force behind the upswing of SH reports and the seriousness by which they have been regarded during the #MeToo era: publicized stories of high-profile sexual misconduct triggers personal recall of having been sexually harassed in the past and reinterpretation of SH experiences. The #MeToo movement may be acting as a driver of social change, facilitating changes in social norms. As these social norms change, organizations should be prepared to effectively respond to a possible increase in reporting SH experiences due changes in norms around reporting SH. Originality/value This study uses an experimental design to investigate the role of high-profile media stories about SH as a driving force behind the #MeToo movement.

show abstract

“…To combat this issue, organizations are attempting to minimize harassment in the workplace by creating anti-harassment policies (DOL, 201;Dougherty & Goldstein, 2016) and offering harassment training (Levin, 2016). While policies and trainings offer awareness of the functional definitions of workplace harassment, these strategies may prove inadequate for eradicating harassment in the workplace due to ambiguous definitions and confused perceptions of what qualifies as harassment (Branch, Ramsay & Barker, 2013;Gordon, Cohen, Grauer & Rogelbert, 2005;Pierucci, Echterhoff, Marchal, & Klein, 2014;Toker, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online Commentary Regarding Workplace Harassment

2019

JOP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study aimed to examine online commentary about enacted workplace harassment conflict to determine the applicability of existing, functional definitions of workplace harassment in this new context. Online comments (N=721) were analyzed through an inductive thematic analysis to identify trends in women's commentary about harassment in the workplace. The analysis developed nine themes of content evident in women's discourse about workplace harassment as well as characteristics of each content theme which were compared to literature on harassment conflict. The study confirms that current, definitions of harassment closely relate to how women describe workplace harassment conflict in this new, mediated context.

show abstract

Creating shared reality about ambiguous sexual harassment: The role of stimulus ambiguity in audience-tuning effects on memory.

Cited by 22 publications

References 32 publications

The Audience-Tuning Effect of Negative Stereotypes in Communication

The Audience-Tuning Effect of Negative Stereotypes in Communication

High-profile sexual misconduct media triggers sex harassment recall and reinterpretation

Online Commentary Regarding Workplace Harassment

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About