Self-Promoters Tend to Misjudge How Annoying They Are to Others
psychologicalscience.org
psychologicalscience.org
>The researchers ran two online experiments to find evidence of the misperception. They asked some participants to describe a time they had bragged about themselves (self-promoters) and asked others to describe a time that they were on the receiving end of someone else’s bragging (recipients).
>Taken together, the data from the two experiments indicated that self-promoters overestimate the extent to which people on the receiving end of their stories are likely to feel happy for them and proud of them. At the same time, they also seem to underestimate the extent to which recipients are likely to feel annoyed with them.
Moreover, while I'm not impressed with the evidence of this study, finding out what people say when you ask them to remember X is a perfectly legitimate thing to collect data on, as long you recognize its limitations.
>Bad evidence may be perfectly reproducible.
That was part of my point, namely that a weakly supported interpretation of subjective reports is probably a lot easier to reproduce than more empiric studies, but it does nothing to further the art.
>finding out what people say when you ask them to remember X is a perfectly legitimate thing to collect data on, as long you recognize its limitations.
I'm actually not arguing that subjective reports aren't legitimate data though. I think this study's methodology was also flawed due to the way it was structured. Group A was asked to describe an act of self-promotion of their choosing, and in a separate survey, Group B was asked to describe an instance of their choosing when someone had self-promoted to them. It's disjointed and lacking context.
There is a distinct possibility that people in Group A chose to report a time when they felt that their bragging was socially acceptable and perhaps the people they bragged to were actually happy for them (e.g. health of their child). Likewise, I think the people in Group B were more likely to report a particularly obnoxious brag simply because that would be more memorable.
A better (albeit admittedly more difficult to execute) study would involve investigating real-world and online instances of humblebragging, where there is direct relationship between promoter and recipient, and the subjects don't get to decide which experience they describe.
In case not: reproducibility is a major concern with psychological studies in general. Drawing broad/subjective conclusions will make the results easier reproduce, but it also leaves more room for confirmation bias, so it's not a valid solution to the problem.
"Drawing broad/subjective conclusions will make the results easier reproduce." Not sure I can say anything more useful beyond what I said before. I just don't think this is true.
Say- just for argument's sake- that another group of researchers did this same experiment but came to a different conclusion such as: "members of this demographic were more likely to describe a certain type of self-promotion as being positively-received, despite the fact that this type of self-promotion was consistently described as negative by the recipient group".
Whenever anyone else repeated the experiment, it would seemingly be much easier to align their conclusion with that of the original experiment than with this imaginary example just by virtue of the fact that the original conclusion was so broad.
As I understand it, reproducibility means "you can run this same experiment and expect to get the same effect." Reproducibility is an issue because of study designs that are unusually to get accidental results. So you have your p value < .05, but the worry is that it's just an accident. If it's not an accident, then you should be able to run the exact same study again and get a similar effect. The problem of reproducibility is that even _that_ may not possible for some notable studies. Because of bad experimental design, we were just reporting meaningless results (the 5% chance that you get a nice p-value for an effect that isn't real). So in the case of this experiment, reproducibility is "if you survey people about bragging, will coders report their comments in the same way?" not "is bragging perceived negatively?"
I think what you're describing is sometimes called a "conceptual reproduction" where you run a different study that you can argue supports the same conclusion. For instance, you've run an experiment where people seem to show a cognitive bias. Then someone else runs a different experiment, with a different design, and says "my results show the same cognitive bias that dbbolton showed in his study". In this case, the experimental design is different, and the second study doesn't directly demonstrate that you results could be reproduced. But in theory, it does suggest that there's a real phenomenon, because the same explanation seems natural for both experiments.
There has been an overuse of conceptual reproductions in psychology, but what really has people worried is that major studies may literally not be reproducible.
P.S. all of this is based on my understanding of how the terms are used, and I'm not 100% confident I'm right about it. I think I am, but I'm not a psychologist, take my opinion with a grain of salt.
But this isn't even responsible science journalism.
As a consequence [of our hypothesis], people overestimate the extent to which recipients of their self-promotion will feel proud of and happy for them, and underestimate the extent to which recipients will feel annoyed (Experiments 1 and 2). Because people tend to promote themselves excessively when trying to make a favorable impression on others, such efforts often backfire, causing targets of self-promotion to view self-promoters as less likeable and as braggarts (Experiment 3).
I suspect that people (often subconsciously, sometimes consciously) use self-promotion as a way of filtering out the people who don't really like them anyway. If you let everybody know when something good happens to you, then everybody who's annoyed by good things happening to you will go away. Everybody left is genuinely happy for your success, because otherwise they would've stopped listening to you (or if they don't, it's their problem). So this is a way of culling your friends and acquaintances to optimize your social relationships.
So if people are annoyed by your bragging, it doesn't mean they are envious people annoyed by good things happening to you. It might mean that they are annoyed at self-absorbed, arrogant or full of shit you are. These aren't really good traits.
You say that being a self-promoter will "optimize your social relationships" because it filters out people who are simply annoyed that you have good news. I'd call people who simply hate others' mere good news just envious haters. But since self-promotion isn't just talking about good news but bragging, the people you are filtering out with self-promotion are not envious haters. They might just be realists who are into action over talk, not being anxious to take credit from others, not trying to look better than others and make team projects into competitions. That stuff generates conflict, it isn't nice, and the collapse of the reality distortion field can be painful. You probably want some of those people in your life, unless the whole point of your life is to service a fragile ego.
For any given person's actions, there will be a cloud of value judgments around that action. What's arrogant and obnoxious to one person may seem self-confident and assertive to another. And in general, people are happier when they don't hang around people they find obnoxious. So there's some degree of self-selection going on. If taken too far, you may end up in the situation where nobody wants to hang around with you, and that's probably a good reason to tone it down a little with the bragging. Similarly, if you find that the only people who want to hang around you are folks who you don't want to hang around, you may want to either change your actions to attract folks you actually want to be with, or change your definition of who you want to be around. But there's no intrinsic good or bad level of self-promotion, only the level at which you personally are uncomfortable.
Not quite. Reputation is collective, not individual. If enough people agree that someone is self-absorbed and arrogant, that person has a problem.
Now, it could be a problem with the collective, not the individual. Most collectives have a reversion-to-the-mean feedback loop which punishes outliers - with a possible get-out where they demonstrate exceptional effectiveness and value.
But that doesn't mean there isn't an objective reputation consensus, with objective consequences.
So the "That's just your opinion, man" defence isn't always going to work.
The article quite clearly states that such self-promotion is what is often termed "humble bragging" (and in case the article might have misunderstood the study, the actual study itself uses very neutral language, like "sharing accomplishments"), which unfortunately is essentially just sharing any good news at all -- the examples given are new car, promotion, but the gist of the pretty limited study was sharing accomplishments.
From which I have to say that nostrademons is somewhat on the mark. It is unfortunate that many people project their own negative feelings (jealousy, resentment) onto other people's statements, to the point where our lives have to be presented as a shit sandwich if we ever really want to share good news without "bragging" --- "Pretty surprised that a dumb jerk like me got a promotion. I'll probably end up getting myself fired.". It's easy enough to do, but ultimately it's usually lying to yourself and the audience just to pander to other people's insecurities and just adding noise to the whole world.
And one of the best examples of this is the infamous Facebook baby updates: To people who care about the person, those are wonderful bits of news about something that is the one of most important events in the person you care abouts lives. To other people it's some asshole trying to lord over them just because they can procreate...I mean any asshole can go and have a kid and really do you need three pictures of a little shit and noise machine in a whole week? Who do they think they are...
"Bragging" is in the eye of the beholder more often than not, and generally is a case where people have to start to increasingly filter facts about their lives lest they pass the "bragging" line in the sand of the listener. Many people love to hear your bad news, but they resent your good news.
My comment above has been down"voted" yet is absolutely accurate -- this rather weak study has zero to do with someone saying they're a 10x programmer or the "best" PHP coder. It specifically asks about sharing accomplishments. Cue loads of baggage and justifications for people's entirely negative reactions.
There is a difference between bragging and letting people know when something good happens to you. Bragging is socially aggressive; it is attractive only to those who thrive on competitive relationships.
Bragging is the act of demanding social status and recognition of one's accomplishments or properties. It is explicitly a form of self-promotion.
Letting people know when something good happens to you means sharing your happiness (and perhaps even pride) with them. It means being happy and telling people why you're happy. It places them in a position of judgement over your accomplishment. It does not prejudge its value, or challenge them to recognize that value; it inherently risks rejection, and it is a conversation that occurs in the context of your relationship to that person.
The self-promotional message, no matter how well handled, is essentially a form of impersonal communication; the information one wishes to share needs to be shared with as broad an audience as possible.
I do not think that there are nearly as many people who are annoyed by good things happening to other people as there are people who are annoyed by bragging and self-promotion. Nor do I think that those who are not annoyed by bragging and self-promotion are necessarily genuinely happy for your success.
Thus I do not think that self-promotion will optimize your social relationships if their utility is considered to be their ability to support and nurture you as a human. I think that it would optimize your social relationships for the inclusion of self promoters and socially competitive peers, and the exclusion of those who prefer cooperative or individually unique, shared-intimacy-based relationships.
Yes, and about 87% of that difference lies in the listener: for instance, in how much of a small, insecure and self-loathing person they are.
As I said, sharing personal news leaves one open to rejection, which presumably is what you have been experiencing. If any of your peers are indeed "small, insecure, and self-loathing," as you say, then it is probably a bad idea to try to share your happiness with them in the first place; most especially if you are already braced for a negative response, but sharing the news anyways. Your motive here would be really unclear to me as a third-party witness. I'll accept your assertion that what you're doing isn't bragging, but it seems somewhat confrontational to go ahead and volunteer information regarding your successes under those circumstances. If it accounts for 7/8ths of your problems with people misidentifying your attempts to share happy personal news as bragging, then you may have a more general social problem with knowing how to manage impersonal relationships. I'm pretty bad at that, myself.
With regards to that remaining 1/8th, the way the speaker is conducting himself, what do you see the essential difference between bragging and sharing good news to be? What is it in people's demeanor or attitude that makes you, as an audience, feel that they are engaged in bragging?
Uncalled for ad hominem.
> With regards to that remaining 1/8th, the way the speaker is conducting himself, what do you see the essential difference between bragging and sharing good news to be?
Probably this: Is the person interested in that sort of thing? For instance, someone who has no interest in sports will probably be bored by news that your soccer team won a tournament. Though you're telling something about you, you will bore if it doesn't connect with the other person's interest.
Then there is the presentation. Obvious self-aggrandization is bragging, regardless of anything. (Blah blah blah good news, and I'm so great, I'm practically the cat's meow! My shit doesn't even stink!)
Rather than go with that, I decided to interpret them in a sympathetic light. Although this required that I imagine you as having experienced rejection, it allowed me to treat your characterization of someone who might think you were bragging ("small," "insecure", "self-loathing") as understandable within the context of bewildered injury.
This is the kind of thing you can only read on HN.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Invitation_to_First_Homeb...
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/RadioElectronics/TV_Typewriter....
No one likes braggers, no one. Sometimes braggarts who have power or some other use are tolerated, but only as long as they have to be.
For instance, I could define my measure for success as my ability to fix something and then go and do it. If I'm successful I win, if I'm not successful I still learn. It won't matter at all in the eyes of others (to me, at least) what the outcome is and the world as a whole will be better off, even if I'm unsuccessful.
Alternatively, if someone is constantly self-promoting, they'll quickly find themselves unfollowed. Seems to me general politeness rules apply: brag all the time, and people will think less of you.
From the original title, I was expecting a study into the latter. Doesn't come across that way in the end.
The issue is not about casual bragging, there's literally a mass of people out there who live to brag about whatever they do, wherever they go, whoever they are with. And we did not need a study to know that they were annoying.
Yeah, but why is that annoying? What is the core reason for reacting negatively to others' self-promotion.
The feeling can be quite viceral, and that might suggest an evolutionary origin. Do we equate self-promotion with unfairness, or taking more than your own share? Or does it have to do with our tendency to define our own well being as a comparison to the apparent well being of others (as in: you got a promotion, so my status relative to the average of my social group got worse).
The fact is, that self-promotion, at least on social networks, is mostly harmless and should not warrant negative emotions. But it does. And that is interesting.
Both require a careful analysis of whether a greedy behavior will be adequately penalized if you are designing a social network to not immediately become facebook.
When I noticed by boss didn't remember I'd been volunteering, and there was no benefit for me, I stopped. The next person required to perform disaster recovery was this older guy, he bitched and moaned at every oppurtunity, making sure everyone knew. Until one day in staff meeting I'd had enough, and said something about his whining, and how I'd done so many times and no one even remembered. My boss was really taken aback. That was the beginning of the end for me at that company, I'd already stayed too long.
Note, that guy later committed suicide. He was a real miserable SOB.
Now, if you have high self esteam, high wealth, and they were braggarts; That's the combination I always found obnoxious. I would encourage these braggers--hoping they wouldn't change. I know it's wrong, but some of these people were sociopaths in suits. Most of them made their money the wrong way--taking advantage of someone, or exploiting a bad situation. Their wealth was legal, but morally made the wrong way. Why should I help a person like this?
That almost never happens. People who combine all this feats usually never talk about themselves, usually others do. If they DO talk about themselves then there's clearly something missing (usually self-esteem).
Worlds most ironic title.
On the other hand, I'm one of these braggarts who don't realize they (apparently) upset others so maybe I'm just weird.
If i feel annoyed, it's either i have some weakness in my psyche or that person is standing in my way. If it's my weakness, i try to fix it via introspection. If the person is trying to mess with me, i'll go for the conflict.
Plain old begrudgery is quite different to the annoyance at people self promoting. Though I can see one trait being 'correlated' with the other.