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Looking for an ice-breaking topic of conversation when making new social connections? A recent study suggests that, rather than sticking to a safe topic, like the weather, the speaker should open up about a recent frustration. Speaking about frustration, aka venting, isn’t just emotionally cathartic. It also plays a role in building social relationships, reported PsyPost.
Opening Helps You Feel Closer
The researchers, who published their findings in the Evolution and Human Behavior journal, put 1,723 participants through a series of experiments. In the first three experiments, participants read an anecdote where the speaker vented about a recent, common frustration. These anecdotes, which were randomly assigned to study participants, discussed both frustrations against others, for example having dinner plans cancelled on them, and against inanimate objects, like having car trouble.
Afterwards, the participants rated how close they felt towards both the speaker, and the target of the venting. In all cases, participants reported feeling more kinship towards and affection for the speaker who had opened up to them. These feelings were not dependent on whether the speaker had vented about a person or inanimate object, suggesting that the social effect was linked to the speaker’s perceived emotional vulnerability, rather than the target of the frustration.
But There’s a Catch
In the first three experiments, some of the participants were assigned to read the venting vignettes that emphasized emotional vulnerability, with the speaker expressing their feelings about a frustration. Other participants were assigned to a venting script with a derogatory condition. In these anecdotes, the speaker was overly and openly hostile towards the target of their frustration. The researchers found that when speakers used overtly hostile language, participants did not report feeling closer to them as a result of the vent. In fact, sometimes, they even reported feeling less closeness.
This trend was still apparent in the fourth experiment, in which researchers switched up the language of the vignettes, so that the vignette that was hostile no longer included open insults towards the person venting.
In experiment five, after reading, participants played the Dictator Game where people have to pass out resources to themselves and others. Overwhelmingly, they chose to give more to the speaker when they were expressing their frustration rather than hostility and derogation.
But derogation isn’t the only limiting factor when it comes to the social benefits of venting. In a sixth experiment, researchers suggested the speaker had an ulterior motive to their venting by creating an anecdote where the venter and venter were competing for a romantic interest. When the participants perceived the venter as having a personal rivalry, they didn’t rate themselves as feeling closer to the venter. This suggests that sincerity plays a role in the social benefits of venting.
The Role of Venting
This study casts doubt on emotional catharsis being the key unconscious factor driving people to vent, as was long perceived to be the case.
“When people vent, we might say that it’s about getting frustrations off our chests — and on some level, it is,” lead study author, Jaimie Krems, told PsyPost. “But on another level, under certain parameters, this very same behavior can cause the friends we vent to to like us better and support us more than the mutual friends we vent about.
“By showing that venting among friends can help ventees capture more of their friends’ relative affections, we’ve provided perhaps the first viable alternative hypothesis from the predominant, popular, and importantly wrong Freudian account for why people vent.”
But if you want to vent, The Greater Good Science Center cautions that too much venting can cause frictions in relationships. Be selective about who you want to vent to, make sure you ask them their perspective, do not vent to someone who has not helped you before, and think twice before venting on social media.
Remember, venting isn’t just a way to lighten one’s emotional load; it might also be key to strengthening social bonds if handled correctly.. It seems a little shared frustration could go a long way toward building friendships.
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