Abstract

A conversation goes well when both people build on what they already share. This article reviews four bodies of evidence. First, conversation is a joint activity that rests on common ground, and within a conversation the terms two people establish are specific to that pair and are reused in later references, though speakers simplify them over time and abandon them when necessary (Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986; Brennan & Clark, 1996); that such common ground accumulates across meetings is this article’s extension of the account on which all collective action rests on common ground and its accumulation (Clark & Brennan, 1991). Second, people recall only a small part of what was said in a conversation, and judgments about where a memory came from are subject to error (Stafford & Daly, 1984; Johnson et al., 1993). Third, people who know something find it hard to set that knowledge aside and estimate what others know with a bias toward their own knowledge (Camerer et al., 1989; Fussell & Krauss, 1992; Epley et al., 2004), and they are overconfident about how well they communicate over e-mail (Kruger et al., 2005). Fourth, in negotiation, considering the other side’s perspective is associated with better outcomes, yet instructions to imagine another person’s perspective do not make predictions about them more accurate; getting their perspective directly does (Galinsky et al., 2008; Eyal et al., 2018). On this evidence, Mars supports meeting preparation: it builds pre-meeting briefs and follow-up drafts from your real shared history, collects every chat and transcript about a person on their page, and links facts back to the original record with reference capsules. The evidence supports the design direction; it is not an experimental test of Mars itself.

Keywords: meeting preparation · common ground · perspective-taking · curse of knowledge

1. Introduction

Preparing before a meeting is common advice, but the reason it helps is rarely spelled out. Research on negotiation gives one outcome-level answer: across three studies using both individual-difference measures and experimental manipulations, negotiators who took the other party’s perspective were better able to discover hidden agreements and to both create and claim resources at the bargaining table (Galinsky et al., 2008).

Psycholinguistics gives a second answer. People cannot coordinate on the content of a conversation without assuming a large amount of shared information, or common ground, and they must keep updating it as they go; all collective actions are built on common ground and its accumulation (Clark & Brennan, 1991). This article asks what preparing for a meeting actually adds to that common ground, where unaided memory and intuition fall short, and how the answers translate into the design of a relationship assistant.

Method: this is a narrative literature review. We favoured peer-reviewed work accessible through a DOI, including multi-experiment papers, a theoretical review and one edited-volume chapter (Clark and Brennan 1991, cited for the concept of common ground; it is not a peer-reviewed article), and included work that limits a popular claim, namely that imagining another person’s point of view is enough to understand them. Every finding carries its source; sentences that draw an inference from the findings are ours and say so. The full reference list with original links follows the article.

2. Common ground is built together and carried forward

Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs proposed that a definite reference in conversation is made jointly: the speaker presents a noun phrase, and the two participants repair, expand or replace it until they reach a version both accept, trying to minimize their joint effort (Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986). On our reading, common ground is therefore not a given; it is produced in the exchange.

Once produced, it persists. In three experiments, Brennan and Clark found that when people establish a shared conceptualization of an object, a conceptual pact, they keep appealing to it in later references even when simpler terms would do; their evidence favoured a historical account that includes partner-specific conceptualizations over one based only on the current situation, and over time speakers simplify conceptual pacts and, when necessary, abandon them for new conceptualizations (Brennan & Clark, 1996). Common ground also adapts to who is speaking: pairs who were or were not familiar with New York City assessed each other’s expertise almost immediately and adjusted their names, descriptions and perspectives accordingly (Isaacs & Clark, 1987). A different account holds that much of this coordination comes from a largely automatic alignment of linguistic representations during dialogue, a process that also uses a simple interactive inference mechanism (Pickering & Garrod, 2004).

Whichever account is preferred, we infer that the common ground between two particular people is a history built over earlier conversations; the pact experiments concern later references within one interaction, and the step from there to accumulation across meetings rests on the general account of common ground as accumulating (Clark & Brennan, 1991), not on a test of it. Based on this, Mars keeps that history together per person: open a person’s profile and switch to the Conversations tab to see every chat and meeting transcript that mentions them (Clark & Brennan, 1991; Brennan & Clark, 1996).

3. Memory for conversation is thin and loses its source

Conversations are jointly created and constantly updated, which sets them apart from most material people are asked to remember. In a study of memory for natural conversations, Stafford and Daly found that even after only five minutes people could recall only about 10% of what was said in a social exchange; the mode of recall and the presence and type of memory goals affected what and how much was recalled, and they remembered more of their partner’s comments than their own (Stafford & Daly, 1984).

Remembering where something came from is a separate judgment. The source-monitoring framework describes how people attribute a memory to its origin, drawing on perceptual and reflective qualities of the experience, and holds that these judgments are subject to error and disruption; misattributed familiarity and incorporating fiction into fact are among the phenomena it discusses (Johnson et al., 1993).

We infer that preparation which relies on recalling earlier conversations starts from an incomplete record whose sources are uncertain. Based on this, Mars links facts back to where they came from: inline reference capsules in answers and profile cards carry a category icon and name, and a tap opens the person, event, Library file or original message, with no digging from memory (Stafford & Daly, 1984; Johnson et al., 1993).

4. We overestimate what the other person shares

Camerer, Loewenstein and Weber named the “curse of knowledge”: better-informed people are unable to ignore private information even when it is in their interest to do so; in their experiments, market forces reduced the curse by approximately 50 percent but did not eliminate it (Camerer et al., 1989). With sensitive measures, adults show a similar bias in false-belief reasoning: their own knowledge of an event’s outcome can compromise their ability to reason about another person’s beliefs about it, and their perception of the event’s plausibility mediates the extent of the bias (Birch & Bloom, 2007).

In conversation, the bias shows in what speakers assume. People were good at estimating how recognizable public figures and everyday objects would be to others, but their estimates were biased toward their own knowledge; the effects were less strong than anticipated, and how far communicators take others’ knowledge into account involves a trade-off with other information in the situation (Fussell & Krauss, 1992). Listeners do not restrict their search for referents to what both parties can see, and occasionally use an egocentric heuristic that they must then correct, a heuristic the authors argue is successful in reducing ambiguity though it can lead to systematic error (Keysar et al., 2000); adults who clearly knew that a speaker could not know a hidden object’s identity still often took it as the referent (Keysar et al., 2003). One account is that people judge others’ perspectives by adjusting from their own, and adjustments tend to be insufficient; egocentric biases increased under time pressure and decreased with accuracy incentives (Epley et al., 2004). Without cues such as gesture and intonation, it is hard to convey emotion and tone over e-mail; across five experiments, people believed they could communicate over e-mail more effectively than they actually could, an overconfidence that Studies 4 and 5 suggest is born of egocentrism (Kruger et al., 2005).

On our reading, what a person thinks they share with someone is thus a biased guide to what they actually share. Based on this, Mars builds a pre-meeting brief from your real shared history, which on our reading replaces recollection: it turns the person’s profile groups, recent insights, open reminders and past conversations into one concise brief (Fussell & Krauss, 1992; Epley et al., 2004).

5. Taking perspective in negotiation, and its limit

In three negotiation experiments, whichever party made the first offer obtained a better outcome, and first offers strongly predicted final settlement prices. When the other negotiator focused on information inconsistent with that offer, such as the opponent’s alternatives or reservation price, the first-offer advantage was eliminated, in face-to-face and e-mail negotiations alike (Galinsky & Mussweiler, 2001). Perspective-taking helped negotiators discover hidden agreements, while empathy was not nearly as advantageous and at times was detrimental (Galinsky et al., 2008). The value depends on the task: perspective-taking predicted performance in a game that required understanding an opponent’s strategic intentions, while empathy was more useful in a game that required judging the strength of interpersonal connections (Gilin et al., 2013).

Perspective-taking has a limit that popular advice often omits. In 25 experiments, Eyal, Steffel and Epley found no consistent evidence that being instructed to adopt another person’s perspective increased accuracy in predicting their emotions, preferences or honesty; if anything, it decreased accuracy overall while occasionally increasing confidence; perspective taking reduced egocentric biases, but the information used in its place was not systematically more accurate. A final experiment showed that getting the other person’s perspective directly, through conversation, did increase accuracy (Eyal et al., 2018). On our reading of this evidence, understanding the other side depends on new information rather than on imagination alone.

Based on this, and as our reading of it, Mars draws on what the other person actually said rather than on a guess about them: the brief includes past conversations, and the follow-up draft matches the commitments you actually made. Before a pitch, you can also ask Mars to research the company and person you are meeting; it returns an evidence-backed brief alongside your own history with them, with questions to ask in the meeting (Eyal et al., 2018; Galinsky et al., 2008).

6. From evidence to design

These findings point to one conclusion: a tool that helps people prepare for a conversation should keep the shared history with each person, show where each fact came from, build the brief from recorded history rather than from intuition, and steer attention to what the other person actually said. Mars meets each requirement as follows:

1. Common ground is a history specific to two people → every chat and transcript on the person’s pageOpen a person’s profile and switch to the Conversations tab to see every chat and meeting transcript that mentions them, so the history you share with one person is in one place before you meet (Clark & Brennan, 1991; Brennan & Clark, 1996).
2. Memory for conversation is thin and loses its source → reference capsules back to the original recordInline reference capsules in answers and profile cards carry a category icon and name; tap one to open the person, event, Library file or original message. When a detail matters, you check the record instead of trusting recall (Stafford & Daly, 1984; Johnson et al., 1993).
3. We overestimate what we share → a brief built from your real shared historyBefore a call or a coffee, ask Mars to prepare you: it turns the person’s profile groups, recent insights, open reminders and past conversations into one concise brief. On our reading, preparation then starts from what was recorded rather than from what you assume the other person knows (Fussell & Krauss, 1992; Epley et al., 2004).
4. Understanding needs the other person’s actual words → follow-ups from real commitmentsFor the follow-up, Mars drafts the message in a copy-ready card that matches your tone and the commitments you actually made, not a one-size-fits-all template. Mars never sends messages for you; what is said remains your decision (Eyal et al., 2018).

7. Limitations

First, the studies cited here test general regularities of conversation and social judgment, not Mars itself. They support our design direction but do not show that using Mars produces the same effects; the product’s effect needs its own evaluation.

Second, much of the evidence comes from laboratory tasks, such as arranging figures or landmarks by talking about them (Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986; Isaacs & Clark, 1987), referential communication games (Fussell & Krauss, 1992; Keysar et al., 2000; Keysar et al., 2003) and negotiation experiments (Galinsky & Mussweiler, 2001; Galinsky et al., 2008); how far effect sizes carry over to real meetings between acquaintances needs care. Galinsky and colleagues combined individual-difference measures with experimental manipulations (Galinsky et al., 2008), and the benefit of perspective-taking depended on the type of task (Gilin et al., 2013).

Third, theory is not settled. The two accounts of conversational coordination, common ground built jointly and a largely automatic alignment, differ (Clark & Brennan, 1991; Pickering & Garrod, 2004), and the popular claim that imagining another person’s view makes us understand them better was not supported across 25 experiments (Eyal et al., 2018). We therefore do not describe the brief as reading the other person’s mind; it collects what they actually said. Note also that in those experiments “getting perspective” meant asking the person directly, in the present, whereas Mars draws on past records: past statements are not a substitute for asking now.

Fourth, a brief is only as complete as the records behind it. Mars builds it from saved facts, insights, reminders and chats, and every fact can be traced back to its original record with a reference capsule, so that you can check a detail rather than take it on trust.

8. Conclusion

A conversation builds on what two people already share, yet memory keeps little of earlier conversations, loses track of where things came from, and overestimates what the other person knows; imagining their view does not reliably correct this, while getting their actual words does. Mars pre-meeting briefs, follow-up drafts, the per-person Conversations tab and reference capsules are designed on this evidence.

References

Listed in APA 7th edition style, each with its original DOI link.

1. Birch, S. A. J., & Bloom, P. (2007). The curse of knowledge in reasoning about false beliefs. Psychological Science, 18(5), 382–386. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01909.x
2. Brennan, S. E., & Clark, H. H. (1996). Conceptual pacts and lexical choice in conversation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22(6), 1482–1493. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.22.6.1482
3. Camerer, C., Loewenstein, G., & Weber, M. (1989). The curse of knowledge in economic settings: An experimental analysis. Journal of Political Economy, 97(5), 1232–1254. https://doi.org/10.1086/261651
4. Clark, H. H., & Brennan, S. E. (1991). Grounding in communication. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition, pp. 127–149, American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10096-006
5. Clark, H. H., & Wilkes-Gibbs, D. (1986). Referring as a collaborative process. Cognition, 22(1), 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(86)90010-7
6. Epley, N., Keysar, B., Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(3), 327–339. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.3.327
7. Eyal, T., Steffel, M., & Epley, N. (2018). Perspective mistaking: Accurately understanding the mind of another requires getting perspective, not taking perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(4), 547–571. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000115
8. Fussell, S. R., & Krauss, R. M. (1992). Coordination of knowledge in communication: Effects of speakers’ assumptions about what others know. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(3), 378–391. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.62.3.378
9. Galinsky, A. D., & Mussweiler, T. (2001). First offers as anchors: The role of perspective-taking and negotiator focus. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(4), 657–669. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.4.657
10. Galinsky, A. D., Maddux, W. W., Gilin, D., & White, J. B. (2008). Why it pays to get inside the head of your opponent: The differential effects of perspective taking and empathy in negotiations. Psychological Science, 19(4), 378–384. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02096.x
11. Gilin, D., Maddux, W. W., Carpenter, J., & Galinsky, A. D. (2013). When to use your head and when to use your heart: The differential value of perspective-taking versus empathy in competitive interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212465320
12. Isaacs, E. A., & Clark, H. H. (1987). References in conversation between experts and novices. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 116(1), 26–37. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.116.1.26
13. Johnson, M. K., Hashtroudi, S., & Lindsay, D. S. (1993). Source monitoring. Psychological Bulletin, 114(1), 3–28. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.114.1.3
14. Keysar, B., Barr, D. J., Balin, J. A., & Brauner, J. S. (2000). Taking perspective in conversation: The role of mutual knowledge in comprehension. Psychological Science, 11(1), 32–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00211
15. Keysar, B., Lin, S., & Barr, D. J. (2003). Limits on theory of mind use in adults. Cognition, 89(1), 25–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(03)00064-7
16. Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J., & Ng, Z.-W. (2005). Egocentrism over e-mail: Can we communicate as well as we think?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(6), 925–936. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.925
17. Pickering, M. J., & Garrod, S. (2004). Toward a mechanistic psychology of dialogue. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(2), 169–190. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X04000056
18. Stafford, L., & Daly, J. A. (1984). Conversational memory: The effects of recall mode and memory expectancies on remembrances of natural conversations. Human Communication Research, 10(3), 379–402. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1984.tb00024.x

Cite this article

Mars Research. (2026). Why preparing before a meeting works: common ground and perspective-taking. MarsDataAI. https://marsdata.ai/research/common-ground-before-meetings