Bellek üzerindeki sosyal etkiler: Bağımlılık

Research has shown that when people perform a task with others, they incidentally encode co-actor relevant information in the task as a result of task co-representation. However, it is largely unknown what happens to individuals' memory in joint tasks when individuals are interdependent to each other in terms of goal attainment, namely in cooperative and competitive situations. In the present study, we examined the effect of each social context (independence vs cooperation vs competition) on individuals' encoding of the co-actor relevant information. Our results suggest that individuals in a cooperative relationship recall co-actor relevant information better than information non-relevant to any party because cooperation enhances self-other integration, which in turn makes task co-representation more likely. Conversely, individuals in the competition condition do not show an enhanced recall performance for co-actor relevant information compared to information non-relevant to any party, due to low self-other integration that obstructs task co-representation. Furthermore, the present study contributes to the debate of whether individuals co-represent what co-actor is supposed to do (task co-representation) or they co-represent that another agent is responsible for part of the task, and when it is his turn (actor co-representation account) by providing evidence supporting the task co-representation account.