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).
Characteristics of our attitudes may determine how we communicate these attitudes to others (e.g., by forcing our opinions onto others; Rios et al., 2014).
Newer work in our lab examines the social context of people’s attitude expressions. For example, one project examines the inferences people make about a person’s communication attempts (e.g., are they trying to persuade me?). Another project examines actual interactions and attempts to understand how different interpersonal goals can shape the psychological experiences of conversations about one’s attitudes as well as interpersonal and attitudinal outcomes.