REVISING DISRUPTED IMPRESSIONS THROUGH CONVERSATION

This study examined how a negative revelation (e.g., discovering a pre viously unknown stigma) disrupts dyads' shared impressions of another person; dyads attempt to revise impression by focusing on negative, st igma-congruent information. Because some individual social cognitive p rocesses have dyad-level analogues (e.g., transactive memory), it was proposed that the time dyads allocate to discussing certain informatio n mimics individual attentional processes: measures of conversation co ntent similarly should mimic measures of individual thought processes. In 2 experiments, dyads' impressions either were disrupted or not dis rupted by a stigma revelation: In both experiments, compared with nond isrupted dyads, disrupted dyads discussed congruent information longer , discussed how it fit their impressions, and questioned each other ab out it. Experiment 2 also showed that, after disruption, dyads increas ed focus on congruent information over time.