As long as we consider how our words might land, being more open about ourselves can make us happier, strengthen our social ties and may even help us live longer.
While some people worry about oversharing, research suggests the bigger mistake is often holding back.
“What we’re really trying to predict is, how will saying something impact the other person? How will it impact how they see us?” said Vanessa Bohns, a social psychologist at Cornell University and author of the new book, Should I Say Something? The Science of What to Share – and What to Keep to Yourself.
If you want to share your good news, try to focus on the effort it took to achieve your success, and any false starts or failures along the way. That kind of story is more likely to inspire people, Bohns said.
She also said many people underestimate how much friends and family will vicariously enjoy their success.
“They’re connected to you, and when you tell them you’re achieving something, that makes them excited to go on and share,” Bohns said. “If you have a friend who is going on ‘Jeopardy’ or a friend who works for Nasa, we like to brag about those people.”
Another tip: People dislike humblebragging, the common social media trend of sharing good news wrapped in false modesty. It feels insincere, Bohns said. So if you’re going to share your success, do it authentically and proudly.
2. Share more positives than negatives
There are a lot of pejorative terms for sharing bad news: Sadfishing. Trauma dumping. Being a Debbie Downer. Often when things aren’t going well, we hesitate to open up about it for fear of being overly negative.
“Belonging is one of the most fundamental human motivations,” Bohns said. “One of our biggest worries when we’re struggling is that if we share what’s going on, people might not like us as much.”
Fortunately this fear is usually misplaced, she said. Sharing our vulnerabilities can actually make people like us more and feel closer to us. But we should be mindful about how we do it.
Bohns said that complaining can often feel like a lowest common denominator, and an easy way to connect with others. But if you always focus on the negative, people may start to tune you out, and it might even make you feel worse.
Bohns suggests a general goal of sharing five pieces of positive news for every bad one because negative information is stickier in others’ minds. (Of course this can change depending on your life circumstances.)
There are also risks with sharing an insecurity you have, especially at work. It could undermine your appearance of competency if you disclose it too widely.
“Even though people may be very drawn to you and like you for sharing and opening up, it may also come with this trade-off of not being sure that you can quite get the job done right now,” Bohns said.
3. Be curious, don’t treat people like curiosities
Questions are the glue that make us feel close to one another, Bohns said. But they can also backfire, making us feel further apart.
Research shows that asking follow-up questions in conversation shows that you’re listening and engaged, making the other person feel heard. Often we underestimate how much people will enjoy moving beyond small talk. It turns out, most of us enjoy talking about personal subjects more than the weather.
But there’s a caveat.
“That doesn’t mean you can just ask anybody anything,” Bohns said.
She makes a distinction between being curious about another person and treating them like a curiosity.
Questions about what a person thinks or feels can often lead to closeness. But questions about someone’s appearance or what sets them apart can have the opposite effect, drawing attention to what makes someone different and shutting down the opportunity for connection.
4. Give honest feedback, but kindly
A group of psychologists wanted to know when and why people gave feedback, so they constructed a study in which participants were asked questions by a person with a glob of lipstick, a marker smudge or chocolate smeared on her mouth. Then participants were given a survey with more questions, including, Did you notice the interviewer had something on her face? Did you tell her? Why or why not?
“We thought that we would be able to find maybe a gender effect, maybe an age effect,” said researcher Nicole Abi-Esber, an assistant professor at the London School of Economics who led the study. “In the end, so few people gave feedback that there wasn’t any room to do any kind of analysis.”
This, Bohns said, is a classic example of the kind of mistake we make to avoid an awkward moment.
“We would want that feedback. We want someone to tell us that there’s something in our teeth or on our face,” Bohns said. But when it’s someone else, we underestimate how much they would want to know.
The next time you’re confronted with a situation where you need to decide whether to deliver feedback, Bohns offered a way to think it through: Is this something the person could change? Would you want to know if it was you? Do you feel like someone should tell the person the thing, even if it’s not you?
If the answers to these questions are yes, chances are the person in question would like to know the feedback. But assuming it’s something trickier than telling them they have something on their face, you can phrase it in a way that’s kind and forward-looking to make sure it’s productive.
Bohns gives the example of how she delivers feedback to the students in an introductory class she teaches.
She frames it around what a student could do to earn a higher grade. Instead of writing, “You lost 5 points here for not including a definition” she writes, “Keep in mind for next time that you could earn another 5 points if you include a definition.”
The positive framing is received better by students and they’re more likely to make a change based on the feedback, she said.
5. Don’t ghost
Ghosting, or disappearing after a date or job interview, is increasingly common, in romance and in the workplace.
When Bohns was interviewing for jobs, two potential employers rejected her quickly. But a third dangled as a possibility for months while she heard nothing.
When she could no longer stand the uncertainty, she emailed an administrator. It turned out the search had been cancelled. They had decided not to hire anyone after all, but no one had bothered to tell Bohns.
While the two rejections had stung, she said it felt much worse that the many people she had met with at the third employer hadn’t told her that this job wasn’t happening so she could move on.
When Bohns looked into the research on ghosting, she learned it isn’t usually a lack of care that drives it: it’s a fear of hurting the other person’s feelings by rejecting them.
“People ghost not because they don’t care but because they don’t realise how much more painful it is to be ghosted than to be rejected,” Bohns said. “They don’t want to have uncomfortable conversations.”
For the person who is ghosted though, it feels worse than a polite rejection. In this case, like in many others, it’s almost always better to say something.
