Translator: Agnieszka Cabanes Reviewer: Denise RQ
I have a friend.
To protect her privacy I'm going to call her Maria.
Maria has a wonderful job.
She's a photographer, and she's really talented,
and things are doing really well for her.
She's signing one contract after the other - exhibitions.
Last year, she even won a couple of prestigious awards.
What I like about her is that when things go well,
she really knows how to celebrate.
Maria has traveled all around the world.
She's seen some of the most beautiful places in the world.
She's a foodie - she likes to eat at good restaurants,
but she's also a very generous person.
Every year, she takes one month off,
and she flies to Bolivia where she volunteers at an orphanage.
There in Bolivia, last year, she met Dave, who apparently is the love of her life,
who was another volunteer there at the orphanage.
They seem to be really happy together.
I haven't seen Maria in the past three years,
so how do I know all these things about her?
You might have probably guessed
that it is through her meticulous updates on her social media profile.
Maybe you also have a friend like Maria,
and if you are like me, maybe at times, you might have wondered,
"Why does she keep bragging about her amazing life?"
When we ask ourselves that question, there are two common answers that come up.
One is, "Maybe she's mean.
She wants to rub it in my face,
to make me feel miserable about my own life."
Another possibility is that she's fundamentally insecure,
so she brags because she's seeking social approval.
But whatever reason we think of for bragging,
there is one thing that we all have in common,
which is how we react to it.
In general, we all seem to be annoyed by bragging.
So the puzzling questions is, if we are all annoyed by bragging,
how come that bragging is so pervasive around us?
How come it's so prevalent?
How come our social media feeds
are populated by your friends' amazing holiday pictures,
first-class lounge check-ins, and very good-looking food?
George Loewenstein, Joachim Vosgerau, and myself
have conducted a series of experiments to try to answer these questions.
In one study, we asked people to tell us some stories.
So we asked them to tell about a case in their life
in which they were either bragging to somebody else
or they were listening to someone else brag.
Half of the participants recalled a case in their life in which they were bragging.
We called these participants 'the self-promoters,'
just a more polite way to call the braggers,
and we asked them to tell a lot about their interaction,
how it took place, what was the topic of the conversation,
and most importantly,
we asked them to tell us how the person listening to them was reacting,
specifically, whether they were feeling positive or negative emotions.
The other half of the participants, which we called 'the recipients,'
were instead asked to tell us about a situation
in which they were listening to somebody else bragging.
Also, these people were asked to tell us about the topic of the conversation,
and how they and the other person were reacting in terms of emotions.
Participants told all sorts of stories.
Interestingly, the ones who were recalling cases
in which they were bragging to somebody else
were more likely to tell us about cases
in which they were bragging about achievement like a promotion,
getting into med school, a good grade
whereas participants who were asked to recall cases
in which they were listening to somebody else bragging
were more likely to remember cases in which somebody was bragging to them
about making money, having money,
having power, or status, or having some material possessions.
But the most interesting result was
that no matter what the stories were about,
self-promoters systematically underestimated
the extent to which their recipients were experiencing negative emotions.
They figured out that about one fourth of the recipients were feeling bad
as they were bragging,
but in reality, over three quarters of the recipients reported feeling bad
while listening to other people bragging.
This was also true when we looked at the positive emotions.
Self-promoters systematically overestimated
the extent to which the recipients were actually experiencing positive emotions.
These two results are mirrored by another very interesting finding,
which is that self-promoters, as they were bragging,
they were experiencing positive emotions,
and only a very small fraction of the recipients realized that,
as you can see from the chart.
So self-promoters were projecting their positive emotions
onto their listeners.
This made them overestimate the extent
to which they were sharing their positive feelings
and underestimate the extent
to which they were sharing their negative feelings.
We replicated this study
trying to go a little more in depth into the emotional reactions
that self-promoters and recipients experience in these bragging interactions.
What we found was that self-promoters significantly overestimate
the extent to which their listeners
are happy for them and are proud of them when they brag.
And at the same time, they significantly underestimate
how much they're annoyed by their bragging.
So we thought that this was a really interesting result,
and we attributed it
to a psychological phenomenon called the empathy gap.
According to the empathy gap, if we are very happy,
for us it becomes really difficult to imagine how not being happy feels,
and it's even harder to imagine
how experiencing negative emotions would feel.
So basically, both parties in our interactions,
the self-promoters and the recipients,
had a hard time figuring out how they would feel
if their roles were reversed.
If people are so miscalibrated when it comes to figuring out
how others react emotionally to their self-promotion,
maybe they are also miscalibrated when they try to figure out
how their bragging affects how others evaluate them.
So we conducted another experiment.
If you were a participant in this experiment,
we would ask you to write some things about yourself,
to present yourself to others.
You have to write five things to create a personal profile,
similar to what we do
on social media websites or online dating websites,
and participants were free to write whatever they wanted.
They could write about their job, about their education,
their looks, or personality, their hobbies, their interests -
really whatever they wanted.
But only to half of the participants we gave an additional instruction.
We told them to write in such a way
that would maximize others' interest in meeting them.
Once they were done with writing up their profiles,
we also asked participants to predict
how they thought that others would like them,
and how much they would be interested in meeting them.
Then we took these profiles,
and we gave them to a large sample of other participants,
different from those who wrote them,
and we asked these other participants
to tell us how much they liked the profile writers
and how interested they would be in meeting them.
We also had another sample where we asked to indicate
to what extent the profile writers were bragging in their profiles,
in their opinion.
When we looked at the results, we saw that first of all,
participants had no idea how others would evaluate them.
When we compare the prediction of how much they would be liked
and the actual liking coming from the profile readers,
the correlation was basically zero.
So participants had no clue whether others would like their profile or not,
and the same was true for the interest in meeting them.
But the second interesting result
was that participants who were instructed
to write in such a way that would make them liked more
bragged more.
At the same time, these efforts backfired.
People were not more interested in meeting them,
and actually liked them less
than the participants who didn't put that effort in.
So we thought this was a striking result,
and we were wondering, "How is that possible?
How is it not obvious to everyone
that bragging has these negative consequences?"
And we thought that the answer lies again in the empathy gap.
We tend to project our emotions onto our listeners,
and when we are enthusiastic about something,
an achievement, an unexpected upgrade, or we are in a beautiful place,
we are like little children and expect others to share in our enthusiasm,
and at the same time, don't see
that others may be not as happy as we are about the good things that happened to us.
These results are particularly interesting
in an age in which we are more and more connected to one another.
First of all, as the number of connections between us increases,
we tend to feel like we are talking to an audience.
We call this 'broadcasting.'
When we broadcast, we tend to share more self-promotional content.
At the same time, although we are more and more connected,
that doesn't necessarily mean
that the psychological distance between us is decreasing.
It may actually be increasing,
and this may exacerbate the empathy gap.
It would make it more difficult for a self-promoter to figure out
what the reactions of the listeners could be,
and at the same time,
reduces the likelihood that the recipient has any interest
in sharing the positive emotions of the self-promoter.
And a third thing which I noticed relatively recently
is that companies have started to do something really strange,
which is encouraging consumers to brag about their products.
The other day, I saw a letter from an airline
inviting their frequent fliers
to post pictures of their frequent flier card,
using the hashtag 'brag tag.'
So they were inviting them to brag about their status to others.
I thought that was
a really interesting new development of marketing on social media.
So what can we do to reduce these problems,
to make our social interaction, especially online a little better?
I think some little actions may actually help us improve the situation,
and they involve trying to reduce the empathy gap.
So, if you are feeling the urge to share something
to an audience, to your friends online,
just doing something simple
like putting ourselves in the shoes of the receiving end
and trying to figure out what's the likelihood
that they would be happy about our good news,
or whether they would rather be annoyed by it,
may on the one hand, curb our urge to share,
or make us share things only with people who really care.
A second little action would be
involving people who are on the receiving end.
So when we are reading someone else's out-of-control praise,
maybe we can bolster our tolerance and realize that they are bragging
believing that we genuinely share their positive emotions and enthusiasm.
These are small actions,
but I think they may go a long way into reducing the empathy gap.
As we move to a more and more connected world,
they may improve a lot the quality of our social interactions.
Thank you.
(Applause)