Have you ever experienced somebody complaining to you about their significant other? And to make them feel better, you say something like, “You think your significant other is not great, let me tell you about the treasure I have at home!” and basically share a story about your significant other.
Well, we studied that question, and we discovered a few things. The first thing we discovered was that sometimes people lie to make the other person feel better. So, if you come to and complain about something, I do what’s called upper comparison and give you an even worse example to make you feel better in comparison. In some of these cases, people exaggerate. They don’t make up things completely, but they exaggerate to make the other person feel better.
We also learned that in the process, people take a personal hit, because after they say something negative about their significant other, they think that maybe they’re not that great. We also do this more for people we care about. Why? Because we want the people we care about to be happier, and we’re willing to make some sacrifice for that. In fact, it’s very altruistic.
The final thing we learned was that people do this when they think that the other person cannot change their situation. Imagine you come to me in one of two situations. You either just started dating somebody and you’re complaining, or you’ve been married to somebody for 10 years and you’re complaining. In the dating scenario, you might have an out, but the married for 10 years scenario is much more difficult. How do I give you a negative comparison differently in those two cases?
In the first case, I want you to realize if things are not going well for you. I don’t just want you to feel better, I want you to possibly get out of the relationship. In a new relationship, there are still lots of things that we could do, people don’t engage in the comparison activity much. Why? I don’t want to make you feel better. I want you to soak in that feeling so that you will decide what to do. But if you have been with that person for a long time—you’re married, you have two kids—it’s going to be much more difficult to get out. Your situation is less changeable, so then I want you to feel better.
Anyway, I hope you agree that these are fascinating concepts in terms of how we provide our friends with social comparison to make them feel better and the nuances around whether and why we do so: We care more, we suffer, we do it when things are less changeable, we don’t do it when things are more changeable, etc. But I hope it also makes you realize how even simple interactions, like complaining and giving feedback, are simply fascinating.
The more we learned about this, the more I started looking at such interactions between people. You may be complaining to somebody and in some subconscious way, they are thinking about how much do they care, how much do they want to help, how much do they want the person to change their behavior. All these computations get into something as simple as giving us feedback and listening to our complaining.
I hope we’ll have less things to complain about, but when you do complain, please pay attention to what s complex and interesting social experience it is.
Here’s to less complaining—but doing a better job when we do!
