Abstract: Shared attention refers to a state in which individuals attend to an object while perceiving that others are simultaneously attending to it, thereby generating a momentary attentional experience from a first-person-plural perspective. Previous research has shown that shared attention influences cognitive processing, affective experience, and motivational states. However, its promoting effect on interpersonal relationships and the underlying mechanisms have not yet been systematically integrated. Focusing on the core question of how shared attention promotes interpersonal relationship improvement, the present article systematically reviews the relevant empirical and theoretical literature and, on this basis, proposes an Interpersonal Effects Model of Shared Attention.
Existing evidence suggests that the promoting effect of shared attention on interpersonal relationships is manifested across multiple levels, including cognitive, affective, and motivational-behavioral domains. Rather than influencing only a single type of social judgment, shared attention may systematically promote improvement across multiple components of interpersonal relationships.
The present article integrates the mechanisms through which shared attention promotes interpersonal relationship improvement into three interrelated pathways. The cognitive pathway emphasizes that shared attention supports the formation of common knowledge and common ground, thereby reducing recursive uncertainty about others’ states of knowing and providing a cognitive basis for perceived understanding, trust, self-other overlap, and reduced social distance. The affective pathway emphasizes that shared attention promotes interpersonal affective experiences such as intimacy, emotional bonding, and emotional closeness by optimizing emotional experience, enhancing interpersonal attraction, and reducing the psychological cost of empathy. The motivational-behavioral pathway emphasizes that shared attention strengthens approach motivation, relationship commitment, and relationship-maintenance tendencies by supporting the structural cognitive conditions required for coordination and cooperation, and further enhances the attractiveness of interaction partners through the immediate satisfaction of relational needs. Relevant neuroscientific research provides neural-level support for these psychological pathways.
On this basis, the present article proposes an Interpersonal Effects Model of Shared Attention. The model makes three core contributions. First, it extends the explanatory target of shared attention from immediate psychological effects to interpersonal relationships as structured and cumulative outcomes. Second, it emphasizes that the cognitive, affective, and motivational-behavioral pathways are not independent of one another under shared attention, but instead jointly promote interpersonal relationship improvement through cross-pathway coordination. Third, it proposes a dynamic cycle of relational gains, whereby shared attention can promote interpersonal relationship improvement, while improved relationships may in turn facilitate the subsequent formation and maintenance of shared attention and amplify its effects, thereby fostering long-term relational development.
The present article further argues that the promoting effect of shared attention on interpersonal relationship improvement does not occur unconditionally, but is constrained by a series of boundary conditions. First, whether shared attention can be formed at all depends on whether the interacting parties genuinely enter a shared attentional state of “we are attending” rather than merely achieving objective attentional alignment. Second, whether the shared content can be jointly integrated also influences whether shared attention can be further translated into positive interpersonal consequences; when the shared content is difficult to understand or accommodate jointly, or elicits strong psychological defensiveness, its relationship-promoting effect may be weakened. Finally, whether the positive effects of shared attention can consolidate into relatively stable interpersonal relationship improvement also depends on whether the interaction is sufficiently repeated and stable over time. On the basis of these boundary conditions, the Interpersonal Effects Model of Shared Attention proposed in this article has strong testability and can be empirically examined across different contexts, relationship types, and time scales.
In practical terms, the Interpersonal Effects Model of Shared Attention has important implications for promoting interpersonal relationships in domains such as education, virtual reality, parent-child interaction, older adults’ social engagement, and clinical intervention. It not only helps explain how cognitive benefits and relational improvement may emerge simultaneously within the same interactional structure, but also provides a new theoretical perspective for examining the links among co-presence, synchronous co-attention, and relational change. Overall, by systematically integrating previously scattered findings, the present article reveals how shared attention may gradually develop from a short-term interpersonal interaction experience into deeper interpersonal relationship improvement, and provides a theoretical framework for future research and practical applications in related fields.

Key words: shared attention, interpersonal relationships, common knowledge, common ground, interpersonal attraction