The role of co-creation in shaping positive relationship outcomes

In daily social interactions, joint decision making is not just about the outcomes we reach but also about how partners experience reaching those decisions together. Across three studies, we examine how perceived co-creation - the subjective sense of building understanding together, rather than simply agreeing - shapes interpersonal relationships. Compared to low co-creation and pre-existing agreement, high co-creation consistently enhanced trust, rapport, and willingness to collaborate, whether participants envisioned, remembered, or directly engaged in a joint decision. In Study 3, high co-creation dyads were nearly twice as likely to leave the laboratory together, suggesting effects that extend beyond self-report to observable behavior. Mediation analyses revealed that generalized shared reality - the sense that partners see the world similarly across domains - partially explained these relational benefits. These findings highlight the relational importance of how agreement is formed: the process of building shared understanding together may be as valuable as the agreement itself.