| Abstract: | As one of the basic characteristics of all interpersonal relationships, relationship closeness is conceptualized as the degree of mutual depending and understanding between communicators. The present study explored the influence of relationship closeness (i.e., stranger or friend) on the communication of stereotype-consistent (SC) and stereotype-inconsistent (SI) information in the conversational reproduction of narratives. Relationship closeness was constructed by the naturalistically existing pattern (Experiment 1) or the laboratory-induced pattern (Experiment 2). Across the two studies, people were consistently observed to conversationally transmit more SC information than SI information in general. However, the result could change as relationship closeness changed. When tellers orally communicated the story to their stranger partner, their reproductions of the stories showed a significantly larger SC bias. However, when tellers orally communicated the story to their friend relationship partner, their reproductions of the stories did not show an SC bias and they even communicated slightly more SI information. Our results revealed the importance of considering the specific nature of the social communication context when investigating the interpersonal communication of stereotypes. |
