Have you ever posted an amazing experience on Facebook only to have few or no one respond? According to a new study published in Psychological Science and reported in MedPage Today, it happens because readers can't share the experience...they more commonly respond to a posting of the "ordinary" rather than the "amazing" because they can relate better.

Sharing 'extraordinary experiences' with others may socially alienate us

Last updated: Today at 8am PST

It typically follows that after experiencing something extraordinary - such as skydiving, going on an amazing vacation or eating at a 5-star restaurant - we want to share the details with our friends. But a new study suggests there are social costs attached to sharing such remarkable experiences. 

 

Just returned from an epic trip? You may want to rethink how you share your experience with your friends, cautions a new study, which suggests there are surprising social costs attached to sharing our most coveted experiences.

 

"Extraordinary experiences are pleasurable in the moment but can leave us socially worse off in the long run," explains study author Gus Cooney, psychological scientist from Harvard University in Cambridge, MA.

He and his colleagues publish their findings in the journal Psychological Science.

Cooney says he noticed social dialogue tends to center around ordinary topics, which made him wonder "if there might be times when extraordinary experiences have more costs than benefits, and whether people know what those times are."

As such, the researchers had 68 participants in total come to their lab in groups of four. In these groups, one participant was tasked with watching a "4-star" video of a street magician performing in front of a crowd, while the other three watched a "2-star" animated video.

Each participant was aware of which video the others were tasked to watch, and after the viewing sessions, the four participants had 5-minute conversations.

Results showed that the participants who had the "extraordinary experience" - by watching the higher rated 4-star video - felt worse following the group discussion than those who watched the 2-star video, reporting they felt more excluded during the discussion period.
 
The researchers note that further data suggest those who had the extraordinary experiences felt worse because they did not expect social costs of having an experience that divides them from the group.

'A surprising price for most-coveted experiences'

In two further studies, participants were asked to anticipate how they or others would feel as a person in the study who had the extraordinary experience. As the researchers expected, these participants wrongly assumed the person would feel better than those having an "ordinary experience."

Additionally, the team says, the participants guessed that the extraordinary experiencers would talk more during the discussion and would not feel excluded.

"The participants in our study mistakenly thought that having an extraordinary experience would make them the star of the conversation," says Cooney. "But they were wrong, because to be extraordinary is to be different than other people, and social interaction is grounded in similarities."
 
He and his colleagues say their findings suggest we may want to consider how we share our experiences with others.

"When choosing between experiences, don't just think about how they will feel when they happen - think about how they will impact your social interactions," Cooney adds. "If an experience turns you into someone who has nothing in common with others, then no matter how good it was, it won't make you happy in the long run."

Speaking with Medical News Today, Cooney said:

"We definitely don't want the takeaway to be that extraordinary experiences aren't worth having or talking about. The idea is that people don't naturally consider the social costs of having extraordinary experiences.

Sometimes the costs will outweigh the benefits. Sometimes the benefits will be worth the costs. But the social costs of extraordinary experiences are real, and we should be aware of them when making decisions."

Though the team concludes that their findings "suggest that people may pay a surprising price for the experiences they covet most," one thing to note is that the researchers did not also conduct the study with one person watching the 2-star film and three people watching the 4-star film.

So whether the person in the minority watching a 2-star film would likewise feel more negative after the discussion period was not assessed.

Written by Marie Ellis