People’s attitudes or opinions are useful to themselves, but they also exist in a social context and are often communicated with others (Itzchakov & DeMarree, 2022). Several projects in the lab examine the interplay of attitudes and the social context.
Some of this work examines how characteristics of our attitudes affect how we communicate these attitudes to others. For example, people who believe their attitudes are correct are more likely to force their opinions onto others (Rios et al., 2014). In contrast, believing you have a clear idea of what your attitudes are, leads to increased willingness to share your attitudes with others (Itzchakov et al., 2018).
Newer work in our lab examines the social context of people’s attitude expressions. Much of this work examines how conversations with others shape our own attitudes, and how factors like interpersonal goals can shape the psychological experiences of conversations about one’s attitudes. We find that conversations that involve high-quality listening lead people to hold their attitudes with greater clarity (Itzchakov et al., 2018) and increase openness to other perspectives (Itzchakov et al., 2025). In progress work examines the cross-cultural robustness of the impacts of high-quality listening (DeMarree et al. in prep). Other ongoing work examines the inferences people make about a person’s communication attempts (e.g., are they trying to persuade me?) and how that impacts message processing and persuasion outcomes.