Disclosing information about yourself is intrinsically rewarding
Mon 28 May 2012
, LEAP redaktie, LEAP
You might wonder about why people talk about themselves so much. Keeping everyone informed about their shopping, pets, parties and friends on Facebook or Twitter. It’s is because self-disclosure is rewarding, a recent Harvard study discloses. Individuals place high subjective value on opportunities to communicate their thoughts and feelings to others and in doing so engage neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with reward. In other words talking about yourself gives people the same satisfaction as food or sex.
The researchers, Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell, from the Department of Psychology of Harvard University, suggest that humans so willingly self-disclose because doing so represents an event with intrinsic value, in the same way as with primary rewards such as food and sex. Intriguingly, findings also suggested that both parts of “self-disclosure” have reward value. Although participants were willing to forgo money merely to introspect about the self and doing so was sufficient to engage brain regions associated with the rewarding outcomes, these effects were magnified by knowledge that one’s thoughts would be communicated to another person, suggesting that individuals find opportunities to disclose their own thoughts to others to be especially rewarding.
Read the full article: http://wjh.harvard.edu/~dtamir/Tamir-PNAS-2012.pdf
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