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Category: Project

Description: The psychological literature has shown that sharing one’s emotions with loved ones does not alleviate distress. We challenge this notion. In four studies (N=2581), participants were asked to recall an emotional episode (Studies 1a-2: sadness, fear, affection, joy, anger) and write about this episode. Not replicating prior work, participants shared emotions less frequently than in previous work and not all emotions were shared equally. In Study 3 (N=894), participants also answered relationship-relevant variables (communal strength and liking) and individual difference variables (comfort with touch); we found that people who are comfortable with touch by loved ones and who are in a high-quality relationship with their interaction partner reflect more and ruminate less about the episode and are less stressed. Findings about self-reported health were inconclusive. Our work shows that sharing one’s sad episodes can help, if one can “outsource” the emotion to a loved one.