Choosing Our Reality: Relational Mobility Shapes When and With Whom People Share Reality

Abstract

Our perceptions of reality are partly a byproduct of our goals. Past research has found that people are motivated to selectively share reality—shared inner states about the world—with those who help them achieve their goals (i.e., instrumental others). We argue that this desire to share reality with instrumental others depends on relational mobility: how free others are to leave relationships. Across 39 countries (N≈ 17,000), relational mobility predicted more shared reality with instrumental (vs. noninstrumental) others. Two network studies (N = 353; N = 277) replicated this interaction, revealing that perceived relational mobility shaped the likelihood of sharing reality with instrumental versus noninstrumental others. An experiment (N = 590) manipulating relational mobility found causal support: High (vs. low) relational mobility reduced shared reality with noninstrumental others. These findings suggest that cultures emphasizing social freedom influence how people “choose their reality” by selectively merging minds with instrumental others.

Keywords

shared reality relational mobility motivation culture relationships

Goals shape how people see and interpret the world (Balcetis & Dunning, 2006; Greenwald, 1980; Kunda, 1990; Taylor & Brown, 1988). Committed partners downplay attractive alternatives to stay loyal (Maner et al., 2009; Miller, 1997), growth-oriented people misremember their past selves as worse off to feel progress (Peetz & Wilson, 2013; Ross & Wilson, 2003), and ideologues reinterpret inconvenient evidence to protect beliefs (Drummond & Fischhoff, 2017; Slothuus & De Vreese, 2010). Beyond shaping domain-specific perceptions, goals can also shape reality itself—motivating people to construct shared reality, or “the experience of sharing inner states about the world with another person” (Rossignac-Milon et al., 2021). People seek shared reality with those who help them achieve their goals—instrumental others (Elnakouri et al., 2024)—adopting their interpretive lens to preserve valuable connections. Therefore, what people take as “true” perception is an (often invisible) function of their self-regulatory needs.

Do self-regulatory needs always shape people’s reality? Although past research assumes that people are motivated to pursue and maintain relationships with instrumental others, this might be less likely if instrumental others cannot easily leave. Cultures differ in relational mobility—the freedom to form and end relationships (Yuki & Schug, 2020). In high-mobility contexts, people can freely choose and lose partners; in low-mobility contexts, they are more “stuck” with existing ties (Kito et al., 2017). This raises an intriguing possibility: Relational mobility may shape whether people are motivated to selectively share reality with those who facilitate personal goal pursuit (i.e., instrumental others). When others can leave, people may be motivated to share reality to preserve these valued relationships. When others cannot, that motivation may fade, leaving shared reality less a reflection of one’s goals and more a product of circumstance. If so, our culture may quietly determine whose version of reality we come to share.

Relational Mobility and Shared Reality

The relational mobility of a culture powerfully shapes people’s intimate relationships. Whereas other cultural constructs capture the degree to which a person is seen as embedded in a collective group (e.g., individualism; Oishi et al., 1998) or the strength of norms (e.g., tightness/looseness; Jackson, Van Egmond, et al., 2019), relational mobility focuses on how fluid relationship bonds are. Specifically, in high (vs. low) relationally mobile contexts “where relationships are relatively more fragile, more active engagement in close relationships helps individuals to impress potential and retain current partners” (Kito et al., 2017, p. 114). Therefore, within high relationally mobile contexts, people invest much more in the relationships that matter to them by offering up grander gifts (Komiya et al., 2019), deeper personal secrets (Thomson et al., 2018), and more passionate feelings of love (Yamada et al., 2017). The logic here is that people in high relational mobility contexts recognize that they cannot neglect their relationships. Those who know they have other options can choose to pick up and leave if their partners do not step up to the plate.

However, there may be a particularly profound form of commitment yet unexplored: Beyond committing their hearts, people may also commit their minds to those they care about. Shared reality—a “mind meld” involving a shared experience of the world through aligned judgments and attitudes (Hardin & Higgins, 1996; Higgins, 2019)—may serve this function. People might also be motivated to commit their minds in this way to serve both belongingness and epistemic motives. First, people might look to share reality with close others for much the same reason they look to share “grander” gifts: to solidify their sense of belonging and connection with that person. Theoretically, shared reality is thought to contribute to a sense of belonging (Higgins, 2019). Empirical work buttresses this assertion by finding that shared reality strongly predicts relationship success, even beyond other similarities (Huneke & Pinel, 2016; Launay & Dunbar, 2015; Rossignac-Milon et al., 2021, 2024). However, people do not indiscriminately try to establish a sense of belonging through shared reality with just anyone (Elnakouri et al., 2023, 2024; Higgins, 2019). Some individuals are prioritized as objects of belonging over others. In particular, people are motivated to share reality and establish a sense of belonging with others who are important for their everyday goals. Whether it be with someone they just met or within established relationships, people are motivated to create a shared reality with instrumental others—those that help make goal success more likely—partly to cement a sense of belonging with them, making it more likely that the instrumental other will stick around and positively impact their goals (Elnakouri et al., 2024). For example, in one study, undergraduate students were told that they were either interacting with someone who would be able to help them with their career goals (instrumental other) or would simply be asking them about their undergraduate experience (noninstrumental other). Only students in the instrumental other (vs. noninstrumental other) condition shared reality with their interaction partner, presumably as a means of trying to establish a sense of belonging with them to facilitate greater career success (Elnakouri et al., 2024). Indeed, connecting to an instrumental other’s mind in this way through shared reality is a much better predictor of goal success compared to liking, closeness, and trust (Elnakouri et al., 2023).

Getting better grades or achieving a promotion at work through the help of instrumental others is not exclusively due to the enhanced connection and belonging shared reality provides. The epistemic function of shared reality, the other major function of shared reality, also plays a role. Shared reality with instrumental others is related to goal success through greater epistemic trust in one’s capabilities (i.e., self-efficacy), perhaps because “experiencing a shared reality with instrumental others could make people more certain that they can reach their goals (i.e., that they really do have the necessary capabilities)” (Elnakouri et al., 2023, p. 4). Therefore, in a relationally mobile environment where instrumental others have the option to leave, people might be especially motivated to share reality with them, both for belongingness and epistemic reasons.

Our proposal that people not only commit their hearts but also their minds through shared reality in high relationally mobile contexts represents an important extension of prior work. Much like how people in high (vs. low) relational mobility display heightened relational commitment through feelings (e.g., love) or behaviours (e.g., gift giving), so might they share more reality. However, this prior research on relational mobility and relationship dynamics has often focused narrowly on a single, close partner—typically a best friend or romantic partner (e.g., Yamada et al., 2017). This approach may obscure an important nuance: Relational mobility might not just shape the depth of a single relationship but also the distribution of connection across a person’s broader social network. In high relational mobility contexts, where partners have alternatives, the value of shared reality may hinge on its selectivity. To properly signal belongingness to the instrumental others, people might need to distance themselves and share less reality with noninstrumental others, those unimportant to their goals. If someone appears to indiscriminately share reality with many others—including those who do not help them achieve their goals—it could dilute the meaning of that connection for instrumental others (Krems et al., 2020). Seeing the world less similarly with noninstrumental others may send a stronger signal of commitment to instrumental others, thereby increasing relational stability in a more relationally mobile context.

People might also look to share less reality with noninstrumental others for epistemic reasons. Epistemic beliefs can have signaling functions, a way to show loyalty to a specific group or, in this case, an individual (Funkhouser, 2017; Mercier, 2020; Williams, 2022). High relational mobility contexts might push people to demonstrate “epistemic loyalty” by more exclusively sharing reality with instrumental others to the neglect of noninstrumental others. People intuitively recognize this epistemic-related function of shared reality as they expect to be seen as disloyal when they share less reality with an ingroup member (Spelman et al., 2026). Thus, in high (vs. low) relational mobility contexts, people may not only share reality more with instrumental others, but also less with noninstrumental others. In other words, relational mobility may shape not just how much people share reality, but with whom.

To explore these intriguing possibilities, we set out to explore whether relational mobility predicts greater shared reality and whether this relationship is conditioned by a partner’s instrumentality. Specifically, relational mobility might (a) increase shared reality with instrumental others, (b) decrease shared reality with noninstrumental others, or (c) do both. Across three studies, we tested these possibilities cross-culturally with a close other (Study 1), across one’s social network (Study 2), and after experimentally manipulating relational mobility (Study 3). Study 1 leveraged a cross-cultural dataset that tested for the generalizability of the phenomena, albeit with a limited measure of shared reality. Studies 2–3 provided a more direct test of the phenomena by using a validated shared reality measure. To explore the unique effect of shared reality, we included several measures of similarity across Studies 1 and 2 that do not involve shared inner states (e.g., items that ask about shared personality, geographical location, and upbringing). As expected, the predicted effects of relational mobility on shared reality were much more consistent, with the effects of similarity emerging as nonsignificant (Study 1, Study 2a) or even significant but showing an opposite interaction pattern (Study 1; see Supplemental Online Material (SOM) for details).¹

Study 1

Study 1 had two aims. First, we tested whether relational mobility predicts greater shared reality—whether people devote their minds more to close others when relationships cannot be taken for granted. Second, we examined whether this effect interacts with instrumentality, such that people in high-mobility contexts share more reality with instrumental than noninstrumental others.

Method

Participants

To test our hypothesis, Study 1 used archival data collected by Thomson et al. (2018), who recruited ∼17,000 participants from ∼40 countries. A total of 16,939 (86% women, 13% men; M_age = 28.85 years, SD_age = 13.22) participants were recruited through Facebook advertisements over the course of 2 years (2014–2016). Participants were recruited from 39 countries, including countries in North America (e.g., United States), Asia (e.g., Japan), Oceania (e.g., New Zealand), Africa (e.g., Egypt), Europe (e.g., Portugal), and South America (e.g., Brazil).² Participants completed the study in the majority language of their country.

Procedure and Materials

Participants rated the relational mobility of their immediate environment as well as a suite of measures about their relationship with either their closest friend or their romantic partner.

Relational Mobility

Participants completed a standard measure of relational mobility (Yuki et al., 2007), which captures the extent to which people feel freely able to choose and switch interpersonal relationships in a given context (12 items; e.g., “They (the people around you) have many chances to get to know other people,” “Even if these people were not satisfied with their current relationships, they would often have no choice but to stay with them (reversed)”; α = .77). Items were rated on a scale from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 6 (Strongly agree).

Instrumentality

To capture how instrumental the individual (friend or romantic partner) was for the participant, we preregistered the following two items: “I receive considerable emotional support from [Name],” and “I am able to count on [Name] in times of need.” The two items were highly correlated, r = .69, p <.001, and so were averaged to create an instrumentality score. Items were rated on a scale from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 6 (Strongly agree).

Shared Reality

To capture how much shared reality participants experienced, we preregistered using the following item: “I feel that [Name] really understands me,” rated from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree). Although this item primarily captures a narrower slice of shared reality, shared agreement about one’s self understanding (Rossignac-Milon et al., 2021), this item closely overlapped with the validated generalized shared reality measure in pilot data collected after conducting this study, r = .62, p <.001 (see SOM for details), suggesting that it might track a broader overlap in shared reality about the world in general.³

Results

Shared Reality

Do people share more reality when they are in a high relationally mobile context? Indeed, relational mobility significantly predicted higher shared reality, β = .12 (SE = .02), t(16,600.14) = 15.13, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.10, 0.13].⁴ Therefore, extending previous work focusing on behaviours and feelings, people seem to also share more reality with those they care about when in high relationally mobile contexts.

Next, we wanted to explore whether this relationship is shaped by instrumentality. Specifically, is a country’s rate of relational mobility related to how much shared reality people within that country experience with instrumental (vs. noninstrumental) others? To test our hypothesis, as preregistered, we first ran a multilevel interaction between country-level latent means of relational mobility (country-level), as per Thomson et al. (2018), and instrumentality on shared reality. Using a linear mixed-effects model with participants nested within countries and a random intercept for country, we found a significant interaction between country-level relational mobility and instrumentality, β = .02 (SE = .03), t(16,910.55) = 4.51, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.01, 0.03]. A simple effects analysis found no change in shared reality with instrumental others (+1SD) in a low (−1SD) versus high (+1SD) relationally mobile country context, t(48.88) = 0.92, p = .361. However, participants did experience significantly less shared reality with noninstrumental others (−1SD) in a low (−1SD) versus high (+1SD) relationally mobile country context, t(45.89) = 2.22, p = .031 (see Figure 1).

Next, as preregistered, we ran an interaction between relational mobility, this time at an individual level (i.e., each individual’s perceptions of relational mobility), and instrumentality. Replicating the country-level results, we found a significant interaction between relational mobility and instrumentality on shared reality, β = .02 (SE = .01), t(16,916) = 3.05, p = .002, 95% CI = [0.01, 0.04]. Participants experienced significantly more shared reality with instrumental others (+1SD) as they moved from a low (−1SD) to a high (+1SD) relationally mobile context, t(16,916) = 3.53, p < .001 (see Figure 1), an effect that was not present for noninstrumental others (−1SD), t(16,916) = −0.54, p = .586.

Discussion

Study 1 provided cross-cultural evidence for our main hypotheses. Relational mobility predicted greater shared reality, suggesting that in flexible social contexts, people may signal commitment by aligning their worldviews with close others. This association was moderated by instrumentality—participants in high-mobility cultures shared more reality with instrumental than with noninstrumental others, either through stronger alignment with instrumental partners or weaker alignment with noninstrumental ones.

Study 2

Although Study 1 provided robust cross-cultural support for our main hypotheses, it had two key limitations addressed in Study 2. First, Study 1 lacked a fully validated shared reality measure. Instead, it used an item that asked more specifically about the shared reality of one’s own self-understanding. Study 2 therefore used a validated shared reality scale about the world at large, one that corresponds to synchronized thoughts (e.g., “That’s exactly what I was thinking!”), judgments (e.g., “I totally agree”), and behaviours (e.g., finishing each other’s sentences; Rossignac-Milon et al., 2021). Second, Study 1 only allowed participants to nominate one individual. However, relational mobility may shape the distribution of shared reality across a person’s network: Under high mobility, people might strengthen shared reality with instrumental others while reducing it with noninstrumental ones. Consequently, overall network shared reality may show no direct association with mobility, but an interaction with instrumentality could reveal this divergence. To test this, Study 2 allowed participants to nominate multiple network members.

We also tested for a specific boundary condition of the interaction effect. The standard relational mobility measure does not distinguish between perceived freedom for oneself to leave relationships and others’ freedom to leave. This distinction matters. If the relational mobility measure better captures how much participants themselves feel like they are free to leave, it could be that the mechanism is driven by people in highly relationally mobile contexts choosing to associate with instrumental others that they already share more reality with. To test this, in Study 2b, we included a personal relational mobility measure.

Method

Participants

Study 2a

A total of 353 undergraduate students (83% women, 13% men, 1% nonbinary; M_age = 20.60 years, SD_age = 4.6; 36.3% White, 35.7% Asian, 3.1% Black, 6.2% Other) at a large Canadian university completed the online study in return for course credit.

Study 2b

A total of 277 undergraduate students⁵ (80% women, 16% men, 3% nonbinary; M_age = 19.09 years, SD_age = 2.8; 39.4% Asian, 37.2% White, 4.0% Black, 4.7% Other) who were either in their first or second year at a large Canadian university completed the online study in return for course credit.

Procedure and Materials

Using adapted instructions from Orehek et al. (2018), participants were asked to nominate up to 30 people (Study 2a) or five people (Study 2b) with whom they have had some sort of contact within the last month. Participants then filled out personality questionnaires that were not the focus of the current project (see SOM for details) and then filled out a battery of questions regarding each nominated individual.⁶

Relational Mobility

Participants filled out the same relational mobility scale used in Study 1.

Personal Relational Mobility

Participants in Study 2b filled out an adapted version of the relational mobility scale that instead asked them how relationally mobile they personally felt (e.g., “I have many chances to get to know other people,” “I am able to choose, according to my own preferences, the people with whom I interact in my daily life”; α = .74).

Perceived Instrumentality Scale

Participants were asked to rate how helpful or harmful each nominated individual (from extremely harmful−5 to extremely helpful+5) was for a given list of nine goals identified by Orehek et al. (2018) to be most present in people’s lives (e.g., academic goals, career goals). Following Orehek et al. (2018), we created a composite score of network instrumentality by averaging across all items (.90 < α’s < .95).

Shared Reality

Participants completed a measure of generalized shared reality developed by Rossignac-Milon et al. (2021), which captures the subjective experience of sharing a common set of feelings, beliefs, or concerns (i.e., inner states) with another person about the world in general (eight items; e.g., “We often feel like we have created our own reality,” “We often anticipate what the other is about to say”; .91 < α’s < .96). We calculated network shared reality by averaging the shared reality scores of all members in one’s nominated network.

Results

Shared Reality

Study 2a

Does relational mobility predict higher shared reality with one’s overall network? The answer seems to be no. Unlike Study 1, which tested this relationship with one individual, we found no significant relationship between relational mobility and overall network shared reality, β = −.01 (SE = .07), t(288) = −0.18, p = .855, 95% CI = [−0.13, 0.11].

We next tested to see whether relational mobility might nevertheless still have an effect through participants sharing more reality with instrumental others relative to noninstrumental others. To do this, we ran a multilevel analysis, nesting nominees within participants (an approach we took for all multilevel analyses). Indeed, as preregistered, we found an interaction between relational mobility and network instrumentality, or how instrumental a person’s network was on average (person-level), β = .07 (SE = .05), t(308.80) = 2.68, p = .007, 95% CI = [0.02, 0.13], replicating the results from Study 1 (see Table 1). A simple effects analysis found that those who perceived themselves to be in a relationally mobile context (+1SD) experienced significantly more shared reality with their networks when those networks were particularly instrumental for their goals (+1SD) as opposed to relatively unsupportive of their goals (−1SD below the mean), t(306.55) = 7.77, p < .001 (see Figure 2). This effect was not driven by people experiencing more shared reality with particularly instrumental networks (−1SD) as they move from a low (−1SD) to a high (+1SD) relationally mobile context, t(315.00) = −0.30, p = .776. Instead, it was driven by people experiencing less shared reality with noninstrumental networks (–1SD) as they move from a low (−1SD) to a high (+1SD) relationally mobile context, t(278.92) = 3.31, p = .001.

Table 1.

Study 2 Relational Mobility and Instrumentality Interactions Predicting Shared Reality.

Study	Level of instrumentality	β[95% CI]	SE	t	p
2a	Person-level (network)	.07 [0.02, 0.13]	.05	2.68	.007
2a	Nominee-level (individual)	.04 [0.02, 0.07]	.02	3.12	.002
2b	Person-level (network)	.01 [–0.05, 0.08]	.05	0.41	.679
2b	Nominee-level (individual)	.06 [0.03, 0.10]	.03	3.36	.001

Note. All interaction terms test whether relational mobility moderates the association between instrumentality and shared reality. “Nominee-level” refers to within-person effects for each nominated network member. “Person-level” refers to average network instrumentality across all nominees.

Next, we ran a cross-level interaction between relational mobility and nominee-instrumentality (nominee-level for each nominated network member) to see if that predicted how much shared reality participants experienced with people within their network. We again found a significant interaction, β = .04 (SE = .02), t(1963.51) = 3.12, p = .002, 95% CI = [0.02, 0.07]. Replicating our previous findings, those who perceived themselves to be in a relationally mobile context (+1SD) experienced significantly more shared reality with people in their networks who were particularly instrumental for their goals (+1SD) as opposed to those who were less supportive of their goals (−1SD below the mean), t(1964.29) = 20.31, p < .001 (see Figure 2). Despite the overall interaction being significant, there were no significant simple slopes when looking at whether people shared more reality with particularly instrumental (+1SD), t(374.03) = 0.86, p = .390, or noninstrumental (−1SD), t(373.64) = −1.36, p = .176, others as they moved from a low (−1SD) to a high (+1SD) relationally mobile context.

Study 2b

Replicating Study 2a, we again found that there was no significant relationship between relational mobility and overall network shared reality, β = −.03 (SE = .07), t(271) = −0.54, p = .593, 95% CI = [−0.15, 0.09]. However, the expected interaction did not emerge for network instrumentality. Unlike Study 2a, we did not find a significant interaction between relational mobility and network instrumentality (person level), β = .01 (SE = .05), t(278.84) = 0.41, p = .679, 95% CI = [−0.05, 0.08].

Still, replicating Study 2a, we did find a cross-level interaction between relational mobility and nominee instrumentality (nominee level) to predict shared reality, β = .06 (SE = .03), t(1066.97) = 3.36, p = .001, 95% CI = [0.03, 0.10] (see Table 1). The shape of the interaction almost perfectly mirrored the one found in Study 2a: Participants in highly mobile contexts (+1 SD) experienced greater shared reality with instrumental (+1 SD) versus noninstrumental (−1 SD) others, t(1066.96) = 14.33, p < .001. As in Study 2a, simple slopes were nonsignificant for instrumental others (+1SD), t(416.72) = 0.97, p = .330, with a trending but nonsignificant effect for noninstrumental others (−1SD), t(417.02) = −1.95, p = .052, echoing the country-level pattern in Study 1 and the network-level interaction in Study 2a.

No significant interactions were found when looking at personal relational mobility, which overlapped but was importantly distinct from relational mobility, r = .42, p <.001 (see Supplemental Table S3 in the SOM for more details). Neither within-nominee nor network instrumentality interacted with personal relational mobility to predict shared reality (ps = .061–.542).

Discussion

Although Study 1 showed that relational mobility predicted shared reality with close others, Study 2 found no such direct link across people’s broader networks. People in highly relationally mobile contexts did not share more reality overall. Instead, instrumentality again emerged as a key moderator: In three of four analyses, relational mobility interacted with instrumentality, such that people in highly relationally mobile contexts shared less reality with noninstrumental others. Notably, this interaction did not appear for personal relational mobility—how free participants themselves felt to leave relationships—suggesting that what matters is others’ freedom to leave, motivating selective investment in instrumental ties.

Study 3

Studies 1–2 found consistent evidence that instrumentality moderates the relationship between relational mobility and shared reality. However, these findings are correlational, limiting our ability to infer a causal story about how relational mobility shapes shared reality. Therefore, in Study 3, we experimentally manipulated relational mobility to see if feeling like one is in a high relational mobility context motivates participants to share reality (a) more with instrumental others, (b) less with noninstrumental others, or (c) both.

Method

Participants

Based on prior effects of experimental manipulation on IO versus NIO shared reality, ηp² = .03 (Elnakouri et al., 2024), a preregistered a priori G*Power calculation suggested a sample size of 120 participants to achieve 80% power for a 2 (Relational Mobility; High, Low) × 2 (Instrumentality; Instrumental, Noninstrumental) between-within interaction. However, to maximize power, we aimed to collect data from 600 participants. A total of 605 participants from CloudResearch took part in the study, with 15 failing an attention check. Therefore, in line with our preregistration, the final sample consisted of 590 participants (55% women, 42% men, 2% nonbinary; M_age = 41.97 years, SD_age = 11.76; 79.7% White, 9.7% Black, 6.9% Asian, 6.4% Hispanic, 2.0% Other).

Procedure and Materials

All participants first nominated people in their lives who, for their career goals, served as instrumental and noninstrumental others (i.e., participants nominated one career IO and one NIO). They also nominated a third person in their lives who was not related to their career goals in any way. After the nomination process, participants completed a relational mobility manipulation before reporting on how much shared reality they had with their nominated career IO and NIO. Unless otherwise stated, all items were rated on a scale from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree).

Instrumental Other Nominations

As per previous research using instrumentality nomination procedures (Elnakouri et al., 2024; Fitzsimons & Shah, 2008), participants nominated an instrumental other (IO) and a noninstrumental other (NIO) for their career goals. Participants also nominated a third person not related to their goals whom they have known for less than a year. This was determined based on a previous study, available in the SOM, that found that the effects of relational mobility on shared reality depended on the length of the relationship with the nominee, presumably because perceptions of shared reality with cemented relationships are much less permeable (see SOM for full details and extended discussion).

Relational Mobility Manipulation

Participants were randomly assigned to either a high or low relational mobility condition wherein they discussed whether the third person they nominated, someone who is unrelated to their career goals, might stay “close to you and remains in your life” or not (see SOM for the full manipulation materials). A pilot study (N = 102) confirmed that participants’ perceptions of relational mobility, as measured by a state version of the relational mobility scale used in Studies 1–2, shifted as a function of this manipulation. Those in the high relational mobility condition (M = 5.00, SD = 0.95) reported significantly higher levels of relational mobility compared to those in the low relational mobility condition (M = 4.53, SD = 1.13), t(100) = 2.40, p = .018, d = 0.48.

Shared Reality

Participants completed the same shared reality measure as in Study 2 for both the career goal IO and NIO.

Results

Shared Reality

Does feeling like one is in a high (vs. low) relationally mobile context increase shared reality with instrumental relative to noninstrumental others?

A mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed main effects of relational mobility, F(1, 588) = 7.13, p = .008, η ² = .012, and instrumentality, F(1, 588) = 224.60, p < .001, η ² = .28. As predicted, a significant instrumentality x relational mobility interaction emerged, F(1, 588) = 7.00, p = .008, η ² = .012. As seen in Figure 3, the relative difference between IOs and NIOs was greater in the high (vs. low) relational mobility condition, an effect driven by significantly lower levels of shared reality with NIOs in the high (M = 3.69, SD = 1.29) compared to low (M = 4.04, SD = 1.23, p = .001, d = .28; see Figure 3) relational mobility condition. There were no differences across conditions for IO shared reality, p = .451.

General Discussion

Do people’s cultural context shape their motivation to choose with whom they share reality? Through cross-cultural (Study 1), social network (Study 2), and experimental (Study 3) evidence, we find converging support that being in a high (vs. low) relationally mobile context pushes people to preferentially create shared reality with instrumental over noninstrumental others. In other words, when others are free to leave, people appear motivated to maintain their unique shared reality with instrumental others, partly by decreasing their shared reality with noninstrumental others.

This work contributes to several bodies of literature simultaneously. First, it refines our understanding of how relational mobility strengthens relationships. Past work has found that relational mobility directly leads to positive relational outcomes, like gift giving and expressions of love. We replicate this finding for shared reality in Study 1 but crucially find that it disappears at the network level in Study 2. When people nominate everyone in their networks—not just one close, likely instrumental other—relational mobility does not predict greater shared reality overall. Instead, this relationship is conditioned by instrumentality: People look to share reality with instrumental relative to noninstrumental others. Although there was evidence that high relationally mobile contexts push people to share more reality with instrumental others specifically (Study 1 main effect, Study 1 individual-level interaction), there was compelling evidence that it increases the relative difference between instrumental and noninstrumental others (Study 2a and 2b nominee-level interaction) and, most strikingly, that it pulls people away from sharing reality with noninstrumental others specifically (Study 1 country-level interaction, Study 2a network-level interaction, Study 3 causal effect decreasing noninstrumental other shared reality). Indeed, in relation to the last point, Study 3 did not find any differences in shared reality with instrumental others between conditions. Therefore, being in a high relationally mobile context might primarily work to get people to constrain who they share reality with, making people open to seeing the world less similarly with noninstrumental others to solidify their sense of belonging with those most important to them (i.e., instrumental others). Consistent with this interpretation, the observed interaction did not emerge when we measured personal relational mobility, only relational mobility more broadly, indicating that the effect may be driven more by people’s belonging concerns about others having the opportunity to leave them for the sake of new relationships. Still, we did find evidence that people shared more reality with close others in high relationally mobile contexts. Taken together, these results could help to explain why prior work finds that people exhibit the tendency to invest more exclusively in their primary relationships under conditions of high relational mobility: It is a preferential signal that says, “I like you specifically, not others I know, so don’t look elsewhere” (Krems et al., 2023; Krems et al., 2020). To more directly test this possibility, future work could test how shared reality predicts relationship commitment in high (vs. low) relationally mobile contexts when that shared reality is targeted (vs. dispersed).

This work can also help us to understand how people pursue their self-regulatory goals under varying cultural contexts. In highly relationally mobile contexts, people might be motivated to selectively invest in their relationships with instrumental others at the expense of noninstrumental others. These findings might also help elucidate how multiple levels of analysis can come to shape people’s perceptions of reality. Cultural psychologists have documented how our view of reality is conditioned by cultural variation in war, geography, or agricultural practices (Jackson, Gelfand, et al., 2019; Talhelm et al., 2014; Varnum & Grossmann, 2017). Here, the top-down influence of a cultural context (e.g., lack of available water) trickles down to shape how people within that context see the world (e.g., value persistence over indulgence; Harati & Talhelm, 2023). Conversely, there is no shortage of bottom-up approaches documenting how personal predispositions and motivations shape their worldviews (Federico, 2021; Kruglanski et al., 2006; Zmigrod, 2020). People’s personality (e.g., openness to experience) can push them to take on certain political views over others (Xu et al., 2021). People’s motivations (e.g., career aspirations) can pull them toward aligning their view of reality with those who help them with their goals over those who do not (Elnakouri et al., 2024). The present research offers a rare, perhaps novel, demonstration of how these levels interact: People’s motivations can shape their worldviews, but primarily when their cultural context affords them the freedom to do so—that is, in highly relationally mobile contexts. Future work should further explore how predispositions, motivations, and socioecological environments jointly structure how people come to see and understand the world.

Another avenue for future research is to examine possible downstream implications. For example, high (vs. low) relational mobility contexts may foster greater divergence of views. To signal a unique commitment to certain others, people might form insular bubbles of shared reality. Future work could therefore test whether high relational mobility contexts exhibit greater worldview divergence, polarization, and defensiveness—a possible byproduct of people’s motivation to preserve crucial relationships.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-spp-10.1177_19485506261468829 – Supplemental material for Choosing Our Reality: Relational Mobility Shapes When and With Whom People Share Reality

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-spp-10.1177_19485506261468829 for Choosing Our Reality: Relational Mobility Shapes When and With Whom People Share Reality by Abdo Elnakouri, Eli J. Finkel and Abigail A. Scholer in Social Psychological and Personality Science

Footnotes

Handling Editor: Amy Muise

ORCID iD

Abdo Elnakouri

Ethical Considerations

All data collection was given ethics clearance and followed Tri-Council ethical guidelines on human subjects. Specifically, all studies received ethics approval through the University of Waterloo Research Ethics Board.

Consent to Participate

All participants gave informed consent.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported through the SSHRC Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability Statement

We report all manipulations, measures, and exclusions in these studies. Data, syntax, and materials for all studies in this article can be found on Open Science Framework (OSF) ().

Preregistration

We preregistered analyses for Studies 1, 2b, and 3, all of which are also available in the OSF link ().

Supplemental Material

The supplemental material is available in the online version of the article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Abdo Elnakouri is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Houston. He is curious about how people's worldviews are formed and when they change, if at all.

Eli J. Finkel is a Professor at Northwestern University, where he has appointments in the psychology department and the Kellogg School of Management. He serves as founding co-director of the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement, the Morton O. Schapiro Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, and co-host of the Love Factually podcast. He loves running but doesn't do roller-coasters.

Abigail A. Scholer is the Batten Family Bicentennial Distinguished Leadership Professor of Public Policy and professor of public policy and psychology at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on self-regulation and motivation.

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