The Altruistic Side of Sharing: Giving Misery Company by Sharing Personal Negative Experiences

Why do people so often share negative personal information (e.g. a fight with a spouse, a miserable product experience) when research shows focusing on one’s own or another’s negative personal experiences produces undesirable outcomes? (Neuman & Strack, 2000; Schwarz & Strack, 1999; Tiedens & Linton, 2001) In this paper we attempt to shed light on this puzzle. Building upon the altruism (Batson & Shaw, 1991; Monroe, 1994; Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007) and social comparison theory literatures (Corcoran et al., 2011; Wills 1981), we propose that the sharing of personal negative experiences is often motivated by social altruism such that people willingly trade off personal costs to provide benefit to target persons through the process of downward social comparison. Thus, people (who we call “supporters”) share negative personal information not because they are unaware of the costs associated with focusing on negative information. Instead, supporters tell target-persons about their own negative experiences because of a conscious intention to aid target-persons based on a lay understanding of social comparison (Exline & Lobel, 1999). In sum, the findings paint a picture of people as daily social altruists who engage in a sophisticated cost-benefit analysis of two competing forces. The first force, the salient negative force entails a cost for both supporter and target-person. This force focuses both parties on negative experiences, leading both parties to feel negative emotions and dissatisfaction. In contrast, the second force, a downward social comparison force, may benefit the target-person. When considering the combination of the two forces involved in sharing personal negative information, supporters consistently predict a personal cost for sharing such information. However, supporters predict the effect on the target-person will vary depending on whether the cost of the salient negative force or the benefit of the downward social comparison force looms larger for target-persons. Importantly, by speaking about their own negative experiences, people believe they can literally give “misery” beneficial company and are willing to become such company.