Suchergebnisse

After tuning messages to their audience's attitude, communicators' subsequent memories for the topic are often biased toward their audience-congruent messages. In the context of personnel assessment in an organization, we examined the role of audience characteristics in this audience-tuning effect. Student communicators tuned their description of an employee to either an equal-status audience (a student temp) or a higher-status audience (a company board member). Audience-tuning occurred under both conditions, but a memory bias was found only in the equal-status condition. This audience-status effect was mediated by epistemic and relational trust in the audience. Apparently, the equal-status audience, while lacking domain-specific expertise, qualifies as a more trustworthy partner in creating a shared reality, which fulfills both epistemic and affiliative motives.