Have you returned from vacation and are looking forward to telling friends and colleagues about unusual adventures? Do not hurry. Perhaps this should not be done.
Almost simultaneously, two interesting studies were published in the electronic version of the journal Psychological Science, which show that sharing the bright moments of life with someone is one thing, and trying to retell these moments to someone is something completely different. The first paper* was prepared by a group of authors, including renowned Harvard University psychologist Daniel T. Gilbert. The study involved student volunteers, divided by the experimenters into groups of 4 people. Each of the four members was asked (separately from the rest) to watch a short video, and then the whole group was going to discuss what they saw.
The thing is that three out of four watched fragments of banal low-budget cartoons. And the fourth was shown a recording of the performance of a talented illusionist with spectacular tricks. After a joint conversation, each participant had to evaluate their feelings from it and the degree of involvement in the general conversation on a 100-point scale: from complete involvement to complete isolation from others. The other group of subjects were not shown any videos at all. They were simply given a detailed description of the upcoming experiment and asked to guess how they would feel during the discussion. Everyone expressed a strong belief that after watching videos with interesting magic tricks, they would feel better than after watching dull cartoons. In reality, everything turned out to be exactly the opposite, and the result for all fours was the same. The participant who watched the video with interesting tricks felt the worst of all, complained about the lack of involvement in the general conversation and rated his condition on average 30 points lower than the rest.
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“A distinctive feature of individually experienced pleasures is that a person quickly adapts to them,” the authors of the work point out. – Therefore, they are especially valuable, being new or rare. But at the same time, in society, people are looking for acceptance, a sense of belonging and camaraderie. And they are much more provided by an understandable and familiar, and not at all exclusive experience. The researchers also note that the involvement in the general conversation of the lucky ones who have experienced something interesting can be hindered – even if unconsciously – by envy and jealousy from the rest of the group.
The authors of another study**, a group of psychologists at Yale University, tried to trace what happens if we do not talk about our feelings, but experience them together with someone. And here the result was the opposite. The subjects were asked to just eat a bar of chocolate. It’s just that some did it alone, while others did it in pairs. Then all the participants rated the treat. And for those who ate chocolate in the company, it invariably turned out to be “sweeter and more fragrant”. The same mechanism, as it turned out, extends to unpleasant sensations: when the subjects were offered dark chocolate bars with 90 percent cocoa beans, those who ate it together found the chocolate more bitter.
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Erica Boothby, one of the authors of the study, concludes that we underestimate the influence of others around us. It is traditionally believed that shared experiences acquire special value only if they are shared with loved ones. However, the experiment showed that even experiences shared with completely random and unfamiliar people are perceived by us more sharply and vividly.
And both studies together suggest a very interesting idea. Experiencing something unique together is not only the best, but also the only way to share such an experience. No subsequent stories will help here – rather the opposite. So, if you are going on vacation to conquer mountain peaks, descend into the depths of the ocean and do something else outstanding, then it is better to do it in a company: it will be even more interesting. But after returning from this vacation, it is better to tell friends and colleagues that they spent it mechanically moving between the beach and the restaurant in a Turkish hotel on an all-inclusive basis. If only your friends and colleagues themselves are not inveterate conquerors of peaks and depths.
* G. Cooney, D. Gilbert, T. Wilson «The Unforeseen Costs of Extraordinary Experience»,Psychological Science, October 1, 2014.
** E. Boothby, M. Clark, J. Bargh «Shared Experiences Are Amplified», Psychological Science, October 1, 2014.
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