Epistemic Authority in Communication Effects on Memory: Creating Shared Reality with Experts on the Topic

In times of widespread science skepticism, it is important to understand when and how lay people draw on experts' opinions to form judgments. We examined whether participants are more likely to create a shared reality with a communication partner having high epistemic authority than with audiences having lower epistemic authority. In Experiment 1, participants described an ambiguously presented target person to a lay audience or an expert audience (a personnel psychologist) who judged the target in either a positive or negative way. In Experiment 2, we presented participants with ambiguous information about the utility of biofuel, and added a condition with a high -status audience who was an expert on a different topic. Across both studies, participants' brief-delay memory was evaluatively aligned only with the expert on the topic. Thus, what matters for shared -reality creation is not the audience's status but the audience's expertise. We discuss implications for science communication. Experts are often perceived as competent but cold. Their epistemic competence should qualify them as reliable sources in opinion formation, but their relational coldness should make them less desirable sources. To form judgments about an ambiguous or disputed topic, we can draw on the opinions of our communication partners and thus create a shared reality with them. Through shared-reality creation our judgments on a topic are aligned with the partner's view. Importantly, people not only strategically adapt their communication to a partner's opinion in this process, but actually change their own knowledge and opinion about the topic. This is shown by an evaluative bias in people's subsequent memory for statements on an ambiguous topic that they had previously communicated about to an audience with a known opinion on the topic. Not only is the original message to the partner aligned with the audience's opinion, but so too is the communicator's own subsequent memory for the original information. Here, we examined whether people are more likely to create such a shared reality with an audience who is an expert on the communication topic or a non-expert. Previous research has shown that the creation of a shared reality is critically driven by two different motives: We want to feel socially close to others (relational motive), and we want to know what is true (epistemic motive). In two studies, we found that shared reality creation, as indicated by the memory bias toward the audience's opinion, was created when experts rather than non -experts formed the audience. This effect was not simply due to expert's higher social status because a highly educated, high -status audience who lacked specific expertise on the topic was treated like a lay audience. These findings are critical to science communication and the influence experts can have on public opinion.