What’s Yours Is Mine: Spontaneous Representation and Memorization of Co-Actor’s Goals

Joint action involves more than coordinated activity; it is cooperation grounded in shared intentionality, whereby partners represent an activity as something “we” are doing together. This “we-mode” stance should shape attention and memory, making partner-relevant information psychologically significant because it supports a collective goal. Using a joint-search paradigm, we tested whether people automatically attend to and remember partner goals. Pairs of participants searched for targets from different item categories, and trials were successful only when both responded correctly. A surprise recognition test followed the joint-search task assessing memory for the items. Across Experiments 1 (animate stimuli) and 2 (inanimate stimuli), participants showed better recognition of partner-goal items compared to distractors. Participants also showed enhanced attention to partner-goal items in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, participants completed the same task, and returned three days later for a recognition test first followed by a second joint-search task with switched targets. Participants continued to show superior recognition for partner-goal items, and search efficiency improved after targets switched, indicating that partner-goal was retained over time and supported later cooperation. Together, these findings demonstrate that human cognition supports joint actions over time by organizing attention and memory around what “we” are doing together.