Why Self-Disclosure Feels So Good
You will probably pay to talk about yourself, and so will the people you talk to. Whether it makes anyone like you more depends on when, where and to whom you say it.
Answer to the question
Why do people love talking about themselves?
Because it is rewarding in itself. Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell found in 2012 that self-disclosure activated reward regions of the brain, and that people gave up 17 to 25 per cent of potential earnings for the chance to talk about themselves. Disclosure also builds closeness, as in the 36 questions Arthur Aron's team published in 1997.
Key takeaways
- In Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell's 2012 studies, people gave up 17 per cent of their potential earnings to answer questions about themselves, and about 25 per cent when their answers were shared with a friend.
- The 36 questions published by Arthur Aron's team in 1997 left pairs feeling closer after 45 minutes than comparable small talk did.
- Nancy Collins and Lynn Carol Miller's 1994 meta-analysis found that people who disclose more intimately tend to be liked more, but in field studies where strangers disclosed intimately in public, the discloser was liked less.
- The one replication of the 2012 study on record, from a 2023 dataset of 176 student replications, scored 0.25 on a scale from 0 to 1.
You have probably left a dinner and realised you did most of the talking, and that you enjoyed it. Self-disclosure, telling another person something about yourself, comes easily to almost everyone. A 2012 experiment put a price on that pleasure, and decades of other studies have tested whether it wins friends and found the settings in which a personal story makes a listener cool towards the teller.
Why will people give up money to talk about themselves?
The best-known experiments on the habit come from Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell, two Harvard neuroscientists, who published them in PNAS in 2012. In the first, people lay in a brain scanner and alternated between giving their own opinions, such as how much they enjoy winter sports, and judging someone else's. Talking about themselves produced more activity in the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area, parts of the brain's reward system that also respond to money.
Tamir's money task is the part people remember, and it is the cleanest example of self-disclosure being chosen over cash. In Study 2, 37 participants made 195 quick choices between answering a question about themselves, a question about another person, or a trivia question, with each option paying between one and four US cents. They often took the smaller payment to talk about themselves, and across the session they gave up 17 per cent of what they could have earned.
Study 4, with 41 participants, added an audience. On each of 240 trials, people chose between sitting through a five-second wait and answering a question, and some answers were shared with a friend while others stayed private. The drive to share a thought about themselves with that friend cost them about 25 per cent of their potential earnings. The authors put the value of each such chance at just under one cent.
The drive to share a thought about themselves with that friend cost them about 25 per cent of their potential earnings.
Thinking about yourself was worth something on its own, and telling someone else made it worth more.
Jonah Berger's Contagious (2013) brings this work to a wide readership in chapter 1, on social currency, pages 33 to 35. The book uses it to explain why so much of what people say and post is about themselves: sharing your own opinions, it reports, activates the brain circuits that respond to food and money, and people will take a pay cut of about a quarter to do it. That quarter is the Study 4 figure, from the condition in which a friend received the answers, which suits a book about word of mouth, since the extra value appeared once someone was listening.
Has the Harvard self-disclosure result held up since it appeared?
The FLoRA replication atlas records one independent attempt to repeat the study. It sits in a 2023 dataset of 176 replications run by students on a graduate methods course and published in Royal Society Open Science. The Tamir and Mitchell replication was rated 0.25 on a scale from 0 to 1, where 1 is a full success, a score the atlas classes as mixed. Across that dataset as a whole, about half of the attempts were judged successful. The scanner effects in the original were modest, from samples of 78 and 117, and the two money studies rested on 37 and 41 people, the sample sizes behind many findings that later failed to replicate.
The wider case for self-disclosure does not depend on that one paper. In 1994 Nancy Collins and Lynn Carol Miller pooled decades of research on disclosure and liking in Psychological Bulletin. They found three separate links. People who disclose more intimately tend to be liked more, people disclose more to those they already like, and people come to like those they have disclosed to. Across 94 effects, the first link was small.
It was strongest in surveys of people in ongoing relationships and weaker, though still positive, in controlled experiments.
That gradient is informative in its own right. In ongoing relationships, disclosure and liking have had time to feed each other, which fits the three links running in both directions, and the association looks large. In laboratory studies, where strangers meet once, it shrinks, and it is smaller still in studies where people only read about someone they never meet. The pleasure Tamir measured belongs to the speaker; whether a listener warms to the speaker depends far more on who they are to each other.
What do real examples of self-disclosure in studies look like?
The clearest example of self-disclosure on demand is the set of 36 questions. In 1997 Arthur Aron and colleagues published a procedure in which pairs of participants spend 45 minutes on questions that grow steadily more personal. The first set opens with "Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?" The third includes "When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?" Pairs who did these tasks felt closer afterwards than pairs given comparable small-talk tasks. Matching pairs on attitudes, telling them to expect to like each other, or making closeness an explicit goal made no significant difference in later studies.
Getting acquainted is the everyday form of the procedure, and the research says turn-taking matters. Susan Sprecher and Stanislav Treger reported in 2015 that strangers who took turns disclosing felt more attraction than pairs in which one person disclosed while the other listened and then swapped, especially after the first exchange.
Feeling that the other person was responsive, enjoying the conversation and sensing that they were liked helped explain the difference.
A customer review is self-disclosure attached to a purchase. In a 2008 study of Amazon data, Chris Forman and colleagues found that readers rated reviews more positively when reviewers revealed information about who they were, such as where they lived, and that more such disclosure was associated with higher subsequent sales. The data were observational, so they show association rather than cause.
Reading about a stranger is the weakest form in the research, and it still registered. Collins and Miller found that self-disclosure raised liking a little even in person-perception studies, where people read what someone had revealed and never met them. Study 4 is the closest laboratory model of posting about yourself: the chance to share made thinking about yourself more valuable than thinking about yourself alone.
When does self-disclosure make people like you less, not more?
Collins and Miller found one setting where the link reversed. In field studies, where a stranger disclosed something intimate in public, the person who disclosed was liked less, and the authors suggested the disclosure read as a breach of social norms. They looked for evidence that very intimate disclosure lowers liking compared with moderate disclosure, and in the few studies that varied it the evidence was not strong. Context did more than intensity.
Timing matters too. In a 1976 experiment, a confederate revealed something personal either early or near the end of a ten-minute conversation. Participants gave the early discloser more negative traits and liked him significantly less than the late discloser. The 36 questions build slowly, and that pacing gives each disclosure a setting in which it fits.
The habit itself has firmer support than its price tag. That people like talking about themselves, and that disclosure usually draws people a little closer, rests on decades of work across many laboratories. The quarter of earnings rests on 41 people and a single mixed replication, and should be quoted as the figure from one experiment.
Where disclosure goes wrong, the research blames setting and timing far more than depth.
The fear of oversharing can also run ahead of the risk. In experiments published in 2022, Michael Kardas and colleagues found that conversations between strangers felt less awkward, and created more connection and happiness, than participants expected, and that people especially overestimated how awkward deep conversations would be. They also expected others to care less about their disclosures than the others did.
They also expected others to care less about their disclosures than the others did.
Common questions
Why do people love talking about themselves?
Because it is rewarding in itself. In Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell's 2012 studies, self-disclosure raised activity in brain reward regions, and people gave up money to do it: 17 per cent of potential earnings in one study and about 25 per cent in another, where answers were shared with a friend. One student replication scored 0.25 out of 1.
What is an example of self-disclosure in psychology?
Answering a personal question, such as the 36 questions Arthur Aron's team published in 1997. Pairs who spent 45 minutes on increasingly personal questions felt closer than pairs making small talk. Other studied examples include strangers taking turns to share while getting acquainted and a customer review that says who the reviewer is.
Does self-disclosure make people like you?
Usually, a little. Nancy Collins and Lynn Carol Miller's 1994 meta-analysis of self-disclosure research found that people who disclose more intimately tend to be liked more, and that people like those they have disclosed to. In field studies where strangers disclosed intimately in public, the effect reversed and the discloser was liked less.
Sources
Tamir, D. I., & Mitchell, J. P. (2012). 'Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding.' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(21), 8038-8043. doi:10.1073/pnas.1202129109. Full text read (author's PDF at dianatamir.com): Studies 1a and 1b, fMRI, n = 78 and n = 117, NAcc self > other, d = 0.41 and d = 0.35; Study 2, n = 37, 195 trials, payoffs of $0.01 to $0.04, 0.63 cents per trial forgone against other-judgement, average loss of 17 per cent of potential earnings; Study 3, fMRI, n = 17; Study 4, n = 41, 240 trials against a 5-s passive delay, answers shared with a friend on shared trials, average loss of about 25 per cent of potential earnings on self shared trials, self-disclosure valued at 0.97 cents.
Boyce, V., Mathur, M., & Frank, M. C. (2023). 'Eleven years of student replication projects provide evidence on the correlates of replicability in psychology.' Royal Society Open Science, 10(11), 231240. doi:10.1098/rsos.231240. Abstract read: 176 replications from a graduate methods course, 49 per cent judged successful. The entry for Tamir and Mitchell (2012) was read on the FLoRA Replication Atlas (forrt.org): one replication recorded, from this dataset, subjective replication success rating = 0.25, classed as mixed. The underlying per-project data file was not inspected directly.
Collins, N. L., & Miller, L. C. (1994). 'Self-disclosure and liking: a meta-analytic review.' Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 457-475. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.116.3.457. Full text read (author-hosted PDF, UCSB): Effect 1 across 94 effect sizes, mean d = 0.281 (r = .139); relationship surveys d = 0.845 (k = 6); acquaintance d = 0.378 (k = 54); person perception d = 0.191 (k = 28); field studies d = -0.308 (k = 6), interpreted by the authors as disclosure to a stranger in public violating social norms; high-versus-low and medium-versus-low intimacy comparisons did not differ significantly from zero, and the authors report the evidence that high disclosure leads to less liking than moderate disclosure was not strong.
Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D., & Bator, R. J. (1997). 'The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: a procedure and some preliminary findings.' Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363-377. doi:10.1177/0146167297234003. Abstract read: 45-minute escalating self-disclosure and relationship-building tasks; Study 1 greater closeness than comparable small-talk tasks; Studies 2 and 3 no significant effects of matching for non-disagreement on important attitudes, expecting mutual liking, or an explicit goal of getting close. Question wording read on the Greater Good in Action reproduction of the 36 questions (ggia.berkeley.edu), which cites this paper.
Sprecher, S., & Treger, S. (2015). 'The benefits of turn-taking reciprocal self-disclosure in get-acquainted interactions.' Personal Relationships, 22(3), 460-475. doi:10.1111/pere.12090. Abstract read: turn-taking dyads reported greater attraction than sequentially disclosing dyads, especially after the first interaction; responsiveness, enjoyment and perceived liking mediated the link.
Forman, C., Ghose, A., & Wiesenfeld, B. (2008). 'Examining the relationship between reviews and sales: the role of reviewer identity disclosure in electronic markets.' Information Systems Research, 19(3), 291-313. doi:10.1287/isre.1080.0193. Abstract read: Amazon data; reviews containing identity-descriptive information rated more positively; prevalence of reviewer identity disclosure associated with increases in subsequent sales; shared geographical location strengthens the link.
Wortman, Adesman, Herman, & Greenberg (1976). 'Self-disclosure: an attributional perspective.' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33(2), 184-191. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.33.2.184. Abstract read: a confederate made an intimate disclosure early or near the end of a 10-minute conversation; the early discloser was assigned negative traits and liked significantly less.
Kardas, M., Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2022). 'Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation.' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(3), 367-398. doi:10.1037/pspa0000281. Abstract read: conversations with strangers felt less awkward and created more connectedness and happiness than expected; participants especially overestimated the awkwardness of deep conversations and expected others to care less about their disclosures than they did.
Berger, J. (2013). Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age. Simon & Schuster (UK paperback 2014). Read in full by this publication, with a reliability audit. Ch. 1, Social Currency, pp. 33-35: presents the Harvard self-disclosure research, naming Mitchell before Tamir, and reports a pay cut of about 25 per cent, the Study 4 figure.