A shared universe › Blog › Why sharing good news makes it bigger · Español
Telling someone your good news makes the joy grow, especially when the listener responds with interest, questions and enthusiasm. We tend to think of support as something for bad times. But studies show that the way people stand by us in the good times matters a great deal.
The psychologist Shelly Gable and her team studied what happens when someone tells another person about something good that has happened to them. They found that sharing good news makes the joy grow beyond what the news itself produced, especially when the listener responds with interest and enthusiasm.
They published it in 2004 in a paper with four studies. In two of them, people noted down each day the good things that happened to them and whether they had told anyone: on the days they shared them they had more pleasant emotions and greater well-being, over and above how good the news was. In the other two, with couples, those who usually got enthusiastic responses from their partner had a closer relationship and were more satisfied with it from day to day.
Gable described four ways of reacting to someone’s good news:
Only the first was linked to closer, more satisfying relationships. The others, even when not meant unkindly, dim the joy a little.
In 2006, Gable and her colleagues Gonzaga and Strachman filmed 79 dating couples while they told each other about good and bad things that had happened to them. According to the study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the way each partner responded to the other’s good news had more to do with how well the relationship was going, and with whether they were still together two months later, than the way they responded to bad news.
Being there when things go wrong matters. What these studies add is that being there when things go well also builds a bond, perhaps more than we think.
Sometimes it is hard to be glad for others, especially when you are going through a bad time yourself. There is no need to pretend. It is enough to listen, ask questions and let the other person enjoy what is theirs.
If you feel a twinge of envy, that does not make you a bad person. You can acknowledge it inside and still ask warmly. Sometimes, as you listen, a little of that joy ends up reaching you too.
Listening like this, attentively and without hurry, is very close to what is described in how to really listen to someone, and it applies to sorrows and joys alike.
Choose someone you know will be glad with you. Not everyone knows how to stand by good news, and that says nothing bad about yours.
Telling it is also one of the ways of savouring good moments: putting it into words lets you live it again and keep it better. The psychologist Fred Bryant includes “sharing with others” in his list of ways of savouring, alongside others such as noticing the details or keeping a memento.
A shared universe is for good days as well. You can light a star with good news and others will leave you words like “I’m so happy for you”. And when you see someone else’s joy, you can be happy with them.