The Surprising Case for Oversharing

We’re kicking off a new season of The Happiness Lab with some happiness hot takes — bold claims that challenge conventional wisdom about what it really takes to feel happier. Today's hot take is all about oversharing. We’re usually told that revealing too much is cringe-worthy. That it demonstrates social ignorance. That when it comes to overly personal information, save it for your therapist, because less is usually more. Dr. Laurie argues that revealing more than feels comfortable can actually strengthen our social connections and boost our wellbeing. She speaks with Harvard Business School professor Leslie John https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=589473, author of Revealing https://www.amazon.com/Revealing-Underrated-Oversharing-Leslie-John/dp/0593545389, about why TLI (too little information) is often more dangerous than TMI, and chats with University of Chicago psychologist Nick Epley https://www.nicholasepley.com/, author of A Little More Social https://www.amazon.com/Little-More-Social-Unexpected-Connection/dp/0593319540, about what “embracing the cringe” can teach us about connection, vulnerability, and trust. Together, they explore the line between sharing and oversharing, and explain why what feels like “too much information” is often just information. Experts Mentioned: Leslie John https://www.proflesliejohn.com/about, James. E. Burke Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School Nick Epley https://www.nicholasepley.com/, John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Faculty Director of the Roman Family Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Bronnie Ware https://bronnieware.com/, author and palliative carer Resources Mentioned: Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing https://www.amazon.com/Revealing-Underrated-Oversharing-Leslie-John/dp/0593545389, by Leslie John (2026) “Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling as implicit emotion regulation https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1754073917742706” by Jared Torre and Matthew Lieberman (Emotion Review, 2018) The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing https://www.amazon.com/Top-Five-Regrets-Dying-Transformed/dp/140194065X, by Bronnie Ware (2011) A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection https://www.amazon.com/Little-More-Social-Unexpected-Connection/dp/0593319540, by Nick Epley (2026) “Undervaluing gratitude: Expressers misunderstand the consequences of showing appreciation https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797618772506,” by Amit Kumar and Nick Epley (Psychological Science, 2018) “Insufficiently complimentary?: Underestimating the positive impact of compliments creates a barrier to expressing them https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-92058-001” by Xuan Zhao and Nick Epley (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2021) Related Episodes: “The Secret to Making Friends as an Adult https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/the-secret-to-making-friends-as-an-adult” “Why Giving is a Great Daily Habit https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/why-giving-is-a-great-daily-habit” “Caring What You’re Sharing https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/caring-what-youre-sharing” See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Laurie Santos?

  This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, hosted by the amazing Katie Milkman, behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Each episode shares the latest research in behavioral science and dives into themes like the power of self-control, shaping your mindset for success, navigating new beginnings, and why starting over can feel so hard. Katie talks to authors, athletes, Nobel laureates, and everyday people about why we make irrational choices and how to make better choices to help avoid costly mistakes. You'll learn about tools and strategies to help improve your decision making and a ton of other fantastic things

• 0:49Laurie Santos?

  about the mind. Listen and subscribe at schwab.com/podcast or find it wherever you listen to your shows.

• 0:57Speaker 02

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• 1:25Laurie Santos?

  Flu season is here, and it's a great time to take a simple step to help protect yourself and your family. That's why I'm headed to CVS Pharmacy to get my flu shot. And honestly, scheduling my appointment was a breeze. With CVS, you can schedule appointments for up to four family members at once through CVS.com/flu or the CVS Health app, so you can get it done in one go. Did you know that flu shots are free with most insurance plans? Visit your local CVS Pharmacy for your flu shot and get a $5 off $20 coupon with any vaccine. Schedule today at CVS.com/flu. Flu shots are no cost with most insurance. Eligibility varies by patient and insurance plan. Coupon offer not available in select states and is subject to availability.

• 2:10Laurie Santos?

  Restrictions apply. Visit CVS.com/flu for details.

• 2:21Laurie Santos?

  Pushkin.

• 2:29Laurie Santos?

  As someone who's trained in what the science really shows about feeling happier, I often find myself in the following unfortunate position. I hear some well-intentioned piece of happiness advice that's being shared on social media or by some self-help guru, and I find myself thinking, wow, that piece of advice is just totally friggin' wrong. And honestly, the expletives I use in my head are usually worse than friggin'. I'm censoring here because, you know, family podcast. Now, I like to think of myself as a nice person. So when I hear people getting the facts about the science of happiness wrong, I try not to go into super harsh takedown mode, even when dealing with some self-proclaimed expert, someone who honestly is supposed to know better, I tend to use a kinder, gentler approach. I'll drop a comment like, well,

• 3:13Laurie Santos?

  maybe there's another way we can think about this. Or actually, it turns out that there's a study that contradicts what you're suggesting. But lately, I've been starting to worry that this kinder, gentler approach isn't working. Lately, it feels like there's just way too much happiness misinformation out there, bad advice that's not getting corrected, and that could be hurting people. And that's why I'm so excited about this new season of the Happiness Lab. Over the next few episodes, your intrepid host will drop her usual kinder, gentler approach, and will begin just straight up calling out bad happiness advice. And while I promise to withhold the profanities that I'm using inside my head, as I said, family podcast, I do need to warn you, the takedowns you're about to hear over the next few episodes are going to be fire.

• 4:00Laurie Santos?

  I'm really hoping my producers can throw in some sort of flaming sounds there. So yes, just in time for summer, the Happiness Lab brings you a whole season of Laurie's Happiness Hot Takes.

• 4:15Laurie Santos?

  There we go. Nice. Okay, so are you ready for Happiness Hot Take number one? Well, it involves a tendency we hear about a lot these days, oversharing. Depending on how old you are, you may refer to this tendency as spilling your guts, airing your dirty laundry, trauma dumping, letting it all hang out, putting it on blast, or with just three simple letters. TMI, too much information. The advice we usually hear about TMI is simply not to do it, that it's cringe-worthy, that it demonstrates social ignorance, that when it comes to overly personal information, save it for your therapist, because less is usually more. But the first hot take of our new season is that all this advice is wrong. Because as we'll see in this episode, the science shows that healthy social connection

• 4:59Laurie Santos?

  requires more TMI than our lying minds think. We'll also learn that revealing a bit more than is necessary has lots of benefits that we don't expect. And so, here is happiness hot take number one. Oversharing is a good thing, and we should be doing it far more often. Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  When we think of oversharing, we cringe a little bit, right?

• 5:47Laurie Santos?

  This is behavioral scientist and Harvard Business School professor Leslie John.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  Where my mind immediately goes is social media. Someone who's blabbing about all of their personal struggles, unfiltered, or, you know, we've seen so many examples of these, someone's venting about their boss and then they get fired based on what they posted. I think we think a lot about the digital context. There's all kinds of these horror stories of people who have said things that they really shouldn't have said and suffered really negative consequences for it. We have a really negative connotation about it because of that.

• 6:18Laurie Santos?

  Even the term oversharing sounds pejorative. It's lumped in with words like overeating, overthinking, overreacting, as opposed to more positive words like overabundance or overjoyed. In fact, when Webster's Dictionary chose oversharing as their new word of the year when social media was on the rise back in 2008, they defined it as the act of divulging inappropriate amounts of personal information.

• 6:42Laurie Santos?

  But let's forget about the social media version of oversharing for just a second. Your Aunt Judy's long diatribes on Facebook, or that influencer who broadcasts their dates on Instagram Live. Because research shows that when it comes to real people in real life, oversharing is due for a rebrand. In fact, Leslie says that when it comes to revealing a bit more than is strictly necessary, she's a huge fan.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  I am a proud card-carrying oversharer. Again and again, I've found that even those of us who tend to be reveley, we could benefit from sharing a little more a lot of the time.

• 7:16Laurie Santos?

  Leslie has long had a knack for sharing what's on her mind, even when doing so might not be the most strategic option. Take, for example, what she was willing to share with a group of complete strangers at an academic conference back when she was a junior professor.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  I'm sitting there with mostly senior scholars, and someone had the great idea of saying, "Let's go around the circle and share our most embarrassing story." And so, like, the other junior people were like, "Oh, there was a typo in my abstract." You know, these humble brags. But I went for it, and I told my actually most embarrassing story ever, which entailed me peeing onstage in college. I was in a play, and I was laughing so hard in my scene that I start peeing onstage. So that is my most embarrassing story, and now I'm telling it to you again. And I don't regret it.

• 8:08Laurie Santos?

  Or take another tendency of overshareers, what Leslie refers to as the unfiltered blurt. She unleashed one of these blurts during the job interview for her current position at Harvard. At the time, Leslie was being questioned by a group of intimidating senior faculty members.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  And I was super nervous. And when I'm nervous especially, I kind of say stupid things. And one of the faculty members, he looked at my resume. He could sense that I was uncomfortable, and so he was trying valiantly to make me feel comfortable.

• 8:38Laurie Santos?

  The interviewer noticed in Leslie's resume that she had trained as a ballet dancer. So he decided to ask her about that, using a joke to break the tension.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  And he said, "Oh, you know..." I was a ballet dancer, too.

• 8:50Laurie Santos?

  A quick glimpse at this faculty member's larger-than-average midsection made the punchline obvious. The other faculty interviewers gave a knowing smile. But Leslie, ever the card-carrying oversharer, decided to take the joke one unfortunate step further.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  And in that moment, I just sat still, looked him up and down, cocked my head, and said clearly, "One word." I was like, "One word, poof, that's it, my dream job gone."

• 9:16Laurie Santos?

  But was her dream job gone? Leslie's unfiltered blurt was awkward, but it did kind of demonstrate her confidence.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  And there's even research on this phenomenon. I didn't know it at the time, but there's research showing that when, among those who are qualified for the job, if you show a little bit of yourself in an interview, which for me was a little bit of my sassy side, it actually can enhance your likelihood of getting the job.

• 9:43Laurie Santos?

  And in this particular case, that's exactly what happened. Leslie would later learn that she wound up getting her current Harvard position, not in spite of that unfiltered blurt, but because of it.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  They said to me, "You know, when you sassed him like that, we thought, 'You'll fit right in here.'" And he became a super-close mentor of mine. He just retired, and he would love to regale new job candidates about the story. It was like our origin story. It's like, when Leslie did that, she just...

• 10:09Laurie Santos?

  It turns out that there's lots of research behind examples like these, which is why Leslie has become such an advocate of putting it all out there. She's even written an entire book championing the practice. It's called Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing. Leslie opens her book by highlighting a communicative predicament that we often find ourselves in, whether that's at work, or in our friendships, or while chatting with our romantic partners. We wind up facing what social psychologists call a disclosure dilemma.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Disclosure dilemma is that really fraught feeling of to share or not to share.

• 10:44Laurie Santos?

  Let's say you just got a big raise at work. Do you tell your friend the good news so she can help you celebrate? Or do you keep it to yourself so that your friend doesn't feel bad about her own finances? Or perhaps you've recently been diagnosed with ADHD. Do you share that new diagnosis with your boss and coworkers so they can help you get the accommodations you need? Or do you keep things private to avoid judgment about your disability? Or imagine you and your partner are having a heart-to-heart about your relationship. Do you share that you've been feeling bored on your date nights? Or do you withhold that information to protect your spouse's feelings? In these and other disclosure dilemmas, there are two possible ways you could get things wrong. You could wind up sharing too much information, or you could wind up sharing too little.

• 11:27Laurie Santos?

  In theory, we should be worried about both of these possible errors. But Lesley finds we tend to think only about the former mistake.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  We're so preoccupied with TMI, that is real and valid, but we don't even have a word, until now, to describe the other end.

• 11:41Laurie Santos?

  The word Lesley's referring to is an acronym that she's been trying to popularize: TLI.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Too Little Information.

• 11:49Laurie Santos?

  Lesley's research has found that TLI can be more harmful than we realize. As she eloquently put it in her book, "The things you don't say can quietly reshape your life." Like when your coworkers can't help you with your newly diagnosed disability because you never told them you were struggling. Or when a friendship starts to fade because you never disclosed what was really going on in your life. Or when your marriage accumulates more and more tiny resentments over time because your partner keeps failing to bring up the small things that bug them.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh, the risks of undersharing of TLI are so much worse than those of oversharing.

• 12:23Laurie Santos?

  There's even one kind of TLI that studies show can be deadly: failing to disclose embarrassing information to your doctor. What's the percentage of patients who self-report not revealing some medically critical piece of information to their physicians? It's 80% of patients. 80%. I was so shocked when I first read that finding that I mentioned it to a doctor friend of mine. He told me that in just the past week, he'd had a case of a patient who failed to mention drinking alcohol the night before a big surgery, and wound up having a heart attack on the operating table. Yikes. But these TLI findings raise an important question: Why do we so often fail to reveal stuff to other people? Especially when doing so could benefit us? Lesley thinks this tendency stems

• 13:07Laurie Santos?

  from a cognitive error known as the omission bias. Our brains tend to notice actions, the things we say or do, but not acts of omission, the things we fail to say or fail to do. The omission bias means we tend not to notice the consequences of not revealing something. And that means we calculate the pros and cons of disclosure dilemmas all wrong.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Suppose you have ADHD and you're wondering whether you should talk to your boss to potentially get accommodations, right? There's risk and there's reward. And what people fixate on are the risks of revealing. So they'll say, "I'll be discriminated against. It will be a really difficult conversation." And those are super valid, the risks of revealing. But the problem is that they stop at that. You have to look at both sides. You have to look at the risks of revealing and the benefits of revealing. You also have to look at the risks of holding back and the benefits of holding back. You need to do a full four quadrant reckoning to really make a good decision. And yet, when we are left to our own devices, we just focus on the one thing.

• 14:13Laurie Santos?

  Leslie has found that the omission bias is especially common when people are deciding whether to share something negative. In one of my favorite of her experiments, she had her participants play a dating game. Subjects were asked to interview two hypothetical suitors and to decide which of the two people they'd rather date. Let's pretend that you're a subject in this study. You meet your two suitors. They both seem fine. But then you begin asking them some very personal questions. Eventually, you get to a tough one. You nervously look towards suitor number one and ask, "Have you ever had an STD?"

• 14:47Speaker 03

  And they say, "You know, I've had so many I can't even count." They've had a lot. They've all the STDs. The other person, you ask them the same question. They say, "I'm not answering that question." They refuse to answer. And so who would you rather date? The revealer that reveals very unsavory things? Or the hider who refuses? And again and again, we found that people would rather date the person who is the revealer, even if it's really negative things.

• 15:17Laurie Santos?

  Even with bad news, we prefer it when people just tell it to us straight, when they give us TMI rather than TLI. The problem Leslie finds in her work is that we don't seem to realize this when we're on the other side of that disclosure dilemma, when we're in the position of the potential revealer rather than the revealee.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  So we say, "Imagine you failed some courses in college and your new employer is asking you whether you've ever failed any courses. Would you opt out of answering or would you come clean?" And they say I would opt out of answering for sure. But that is the wrong choice, right? So our intuitions are often wrong.

• 15:55Laurie Santos?

  But our intuitions aren't just wrong when it comes to the costs of TLI. We also fail to see the benefits that can come from revealing more information than is strictly necessary. When we return from the break, we'll learn more about all the unexpected benefits of a little TMI. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment.

• 16:19Laurie Santos?

  You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself reaching for over and over again? The sweater that somehow works with everything? The jeans you know will always fit just right? Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe. And that's exactly what Quince does so well. I recently pulled my fall clothes out of storage, and I was so excited to see my black Mongolian cashmere full zip hoodie that I got from Quince. It's soft and warm and perfect for cozy nights. I love it so much that I now have a gray one in my quince.com cart right now. And when I buy that new gray hoodie, I know I'll feel good about my choice because everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. And as the weather gets colder, Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe,

• 17:03Laurie Santos?

  from warm, reasonably sourced down jackets and cozy cashmere scarves and gloves to beautiful 14 karat gold jewelry. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was the Happiness Lab. It's the best way to support the show. Research shows that a good night's sleep can put a smile on your face, and that's because sleep is essential for happiness. Enter Dr. Teal's magnesium spray, a proprietary blend of topical minerals powered by pure Epsom salt and natural Dead Sea salt to help you get ready for bedtime.

• 17:47Laurie Santos?

  When you need a reset after a long day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine. It's an effortless way to relax your body and your mind. Dr. Teal's magnesium spray comes in a lightweight, fast drying formula. Just shake it up, generously spritz on the soles of your feet, and massage until absorbed. I've long been a fan of Dr. Teal's, so I was excited when I learned that they had a new product to help me unwind. I tried out Dr. Teal's magnesium spray after a particularly hard week. It was the perfect ritual to end my day and signaled to my brain that the work week was over and it was time to rest. For wellness you can feel, find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online and in your local bath aisle. Dr. Teal's, yep, you needed that.

• 18:30Laurie Santos?

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• 19:13Laurie Santos?

  I bought Wayfair's washable, distressed, vintage floral oriental rug in blue. That rug is so soft and cozy, and I was able to find it in a vintage-looking blue color that perfectly matched the rest of the items in the space. And with Wayfair, you can get rooms that look great at every price point. I'm only staying in my sabbatical place for a short time, so I didn't want to spend a lot on a new rug. But with Wayfair, you can shop thousands of products across every style and budget, whether you're simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom for the holiday season. And now that the weather's getting colder, I gotta say that I'm especially loving the coziness of my new rug. Find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards.

• 19:55Laurie Santos?

  Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com.

• 20:12Laurie Santos?

  It's November 2009 and a middle-aged Australian woman is about to go viral. Back then caregiver Bronnie Ware was working as a live-in palliative care nurse, spending 12-hour shifts working closely with terminally ill patients. These long shifts meant that Bronnie had lots of time to chat with her dying clients, many of whom seemed to relish the chance to reflect openly about their lives. Often, they admitted to her for the very first time. As patients got closer to the end, they didn't seem to carry the usual worries about oversharing. Bronnie was struck both by how vulnerable her patients were willing to get during these end-of-life conversations and by the similarities across their observations. She thought it'd be powerful to share her clients' reflections publicly,

• 20:55Laurie Santos?

  so she put together a short blog post entitled "Regrets of the Dying." That online essay exploded. Within months, it was shared millions and millions of times and quickly turned into a book called "The Top Five Regrets of the Dying." Bronnie's bestseller presented a list of five things that her dying patients wished they'd done differently to feel happier. And right smack in the middle of that list is a regret that oversharing aficionado Leslie John reflects on a lot.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Regret number three is "I wish I had shared my feelings more." It's a disclosure regret, right? So it's like these people who are dying, that's what they regret. I mean, that is such wisdom to me.

• 21:34Laurie Santos?

  Leslie has devoted her career towards helping people to avoid this big regret by publicizing the many benefits of oversharing, particularly when it's done face-to-face with real people in real life. And Leslie says that the first benefit you get from this type of oversharing is a cognitive one. The act of talking to another person can help you make sense of your inner thoughts and feelings.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  The process of taking this stuff that's swirling around in your brain and putting words on it helps you to cope because, one, it helps you make sense of the things that are bothering you. But when you talk about what's on your mind, you naturally impose a story structure on it. We're natural storytellers. And it doesn't have to be a happy ending, but there's some kind of structure. And that structure... Takes away the uncertainty of how you're feeling. And we all know that uncertainty is a huge cause of anxiety. And so it makes it more concrete, which really helps to alleviate stress. What I love about this, too, is you don't have to try. Like, you don't have to come up with a story. You don't have to be like, make sense of this. You just have to literally put what's in your mind into words.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  The other thing, of course, is the actual affect labeling component.

• 22:43Laurie Santos?

  Affect labeling is a fancy psychologist's term for the act of choosing a specific word to describe your feelings. When we reveal during a disclosure dilemma, we wind up selecting specific words to explain our emotions. Let's say you finally decided to have that heart-to-heart with your partner about why your date nights have felt less exciting lately. As you dive into that conversation, you'll naturally get more specific about what exactly you've been experiencing on those date nights, whether you've started to find them boring or irritating or disappointing or unpleasant. Or say that you're telling a friend about an awful moment at work. Talking openly about that incident can help you determine whether you felt disregarded or frustrated or ashamed or overwhelmed. And studies find that knowing the precise feeling you're going through can help you

• 23:28Laurie Santos?

  regulate that feeling more effectively.

• 23:30Speaker 03

  When you do this, it's like becoming the CEO of your feelings because you're in control. You can name them, and when you can name them, that's deeply comforting.

• 23:39Laurie Santos?

  So that's the first benefit of oversharing. It helps you think more precisely about what you're feeling. Benefit number two of TMI is simple. It just feels good. In one experiment, participants were asked to disclose information about themselves while sitting inside an FMRI brain scanner. The researchers found that revealing personal information activated participants' reward networks, the very same brain regions that would fire if you won a bunch of money, ate something delicious, or took cocaine.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  So relative to people who did not get to talk about themselves, those who got to answer questions about themselves literally found it more pleasurable.

• 24:15Laurie Santos?

  And Leslie says there's an evolutionary logic to why revealing feels so good. We experience acts of TMI positively because they connect us with other people.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  The way sharing increases connection fundamentally is that it increases trust.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  When you reveal something sensitive that causes the other person to trust you, why? Because that's a social risk. If I tell you something sensitive about myself, I am relinquishing control to the universe and implicitly saying, "I trust you because I'm doing it. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't trust you," right? And that in and of itself causes you to trust me back.

• 24:53Laurie Santos?

  But Leslie has found that we often miss opportunities for building that happiness-boosting trust. She finds that we simply don't notice the little moments in which we could disclose something about ourselves to another person.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  So let's take a banal day in the life of me. I wake up in the morning, I roll over on bed, I say, "Good morning, Colly," my hubby. What I don't say is, "I slept like crap." When I don't sleep well, I can't regulate my emotions. I don't say any of that. We get to the bathroom, we're brushing our teeth. What I think to myself is, "You know, I feel older than I thought I would at this age." I think these things, I don't say them. We go down to the kitchen, the kids are frolicking, my husband starts packing their lunch, he's like, "What do you think they want for snack?" I say, "I don't know, another decision, stop it." That said, but what I don't say is, "I need a hug, I'm exhausted, I need some grace today, I have a big presentation coming up." I don't say any of that.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  So we're not even at breakfast yet. I mean, I could go on and on.

• 25:52Laurie Santos?

  That's a lot of tiny missed moments for disclosure, and Leslie thinks each of them has an opportunity cost.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  It's not that we should say all of the things that are on our mind. You don't want that, I don't want that. But I think that we should consider saying more of these things because I think if we did, I know that our lives would be better for it. Being known for who you really are, that's the source of love and closeness, right? Oftentimes, what feels like over-communicating is just communicating. My husband can't read what's on my mind. I need to tell him my needs, and then he's amazing, but he can't read my mind. What feels like over-communicating is just communicating. What feels like oversharing is just sharing.

• 26:38Laurie Santos?

  I love Leslie's point here. Often what feels like oversharing is just sharing. Often what our minds think of as too much information is just information. But if that's the case, how do we get over our fears about revealing? How do we stop missing out on all these little opportunities for connection and start opening up more? To find out, I decided to tag in a friend.

• 26:59Speaker 04

  I'm Nick Appley. I'm a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and I just finished a book titled A Little More Social.

• 27:06Laurie Santos?

  Nick is one of my favorite psychologists on the planet, which is one of the reasons he appears so often as a guest on The Happiness Lab. And not to drop any spoilers about this upcoming season, but Nick will be joining me for a lot of my upcoming happiness hot takes. Why? Because Nick's entire research program is pretty much one big happiness hot take. He's discovered that we consistently misunderstand how social connection works. Whether we're giving a compliment, or asking for help, or expressing our gratitude, or yes, sharing something that seems a little TMI, our minds assume that revealing will feel cringe-worthy and awkward. But Nick finds time and again that these assumptions are wrong.

• 27:44Speaker 04

  When people talk about where their expectations come from, why they think it's going to be awkward, they almost always will talk about vulnerability. I'm exposing something meaningful about myself. They could laugh at me. They could make fun of me. They could think poorly of me, right? They just tend not to.

• 28:03Laurie Santos?

  But how do we start to rewire these mistaken expectations so that we can share more deeply? Nick says the first step is to remember that our minds tend to focus on the wrong stuff during a disclosure dilemma.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  When you reveal something meaningful about yourself, or even something potentially negative, when you share that with another person, you're thinking a lot about the content, what it is that you shared.

• 28:24Laurie Santos?

  We also think a lot about the competence of that content, whether what we've just shared could be perceived badly by another person. If I tell my colleague that I'm feeling overwhelmed at work, are they going to think I'm bad at my job? Or if I tell my friend about a parenting slip-up, are they going to view me as a bad mom? But this focus on what's being shared means that we often miss the how of sharing, how being open with another person makes that person feel. Just as Leslie John mentioned earlier, it all comes down to the importance of emotional safety.

• 28:55Speaker 04

  It's warmth, right? And what we really care about when we're interacting with other people is warmth. I want to know, can I trust you or not? Are you going to be a friend to me or not? And when somebody opens up to you and shares something, they're telling you, I trust you. I'm going to be a friend to you. And how do we judge somebody who opens up to us, who seems trustworthy and kind? Charitably is the answer.

• 29:19Laurie Santos?

  Nick has seen this pattern in study after study. In one experiment, Nick asked a group of subjects to write a vulnerable note that expressed how grateful they felt about another person. He found that participants significantly overestimated how much the recipient would judge how well their gratitude note was written, while at the same time significantly underestimating how the note's warmth would make the recipient feel. In another study, Nick's team asked subjects to share three genuine compliments with a friend, or as they phrased it, "positive things you have noticed, but have not, for whatever reason, had a chance to compliment your friend on yet." Participants were told that their friend would read the compliments and fill out a short survey about them. They were then asked to estimate how positively the recipient would react.

• 30:03Laurie Santos?

  Nick found that subjects significantly underestimated how happy their friend would be, in part because they worried too much about how competent their compliment sounded, how articulate it came across, and how well worded it was. So that's the first thing Nick says we need to remember when we're feeling pessimistic about how a disclosure will go. The people we open up to are unlikely to judge us harshly because they're paying attention to our warmth, not our competence. But Nick says there's a second thing that we need to remember if we're feeling scared to share with another person. We probably haven't given ourselves nearly enough opportunities to learn the benefits of sharing. And that's because disclosure dilemmas tend to trap us in what researchers have called "an unkind learning environment."

• 30:45Speaker 04

  A kind learning environment is one where I have a belief, I go out and I test it, and I find out if I'm wrong, right? So I think I'm going to get an A on this test. I take the test. I find out if I'm right or wrong. An unkind learning environment is one where my beliefs dictate the kind of feedback I get. So if I believe I'm going to do poorly on a test... I might not take the test and then I wouldn't actually learn whether my belief was right or wrong. And the problem in social life is we're often in an unkind learning environment where our beliefs do dictate the feedback we get. So if I think talking with you is going to be fun and enjoyable, I'll try it and I'll find out whether I'm right or not. If I think talking with you is going to be unpleasant, I won't talk with you and I'll never find out I'm wrong.

• 31:28Laurie Santos?

  Our brains can only learn from experience when they get the experiences they need to actually learn. Unfortunately, our poor brains don't get all that much experience with the consequences of TMI because we're often too scared to try it. Because of this, we're not able to update our expectations about oversharing. And that means that whenever a disclosure dilemma comes along, we're stuck with that pessimistic voice in our head, the one that's constantly screaming, OMG, TMI, no.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  That avoidance voice gets stronger right before you're about to do a thing. That's what chickening out is all about.

• 32:01Speaker 05

  And that the cringe is screaming it.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  The cringe is, yeah, yeah, in both ears, right? At a distance, it's just one ear, right? You got the angel on the one side and the cringe on the other. But when you're about to do the thing, all you got is cringe. That's it. It's up to 11, both ears. But that's the part that often makes us deviate when we shouldn't. And you can quiet that cringe voice with a lot of practice.

• 32:21Laurie Santos?

  But Nick admits that even an expert like him still hears that avoidance voice on rare occasions. In fact, I was really touched by a sweet story he shared in his new book about an incident in which his own cringe voice got particularly loud.

• 32:35Speaker 05

  Tell me about the anniversary present you gave your wife.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh. So my wife Jen and I have been married, this, as we're talking right now, this is our 30th year. At 25, I put together a photo montage. I can't believe you're asking. I wrote I was cringey in the book. I know, but it's worse even.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  We just talked about how cringe is like.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  I know, I know, but I know, I know, I know. But you feel it, right? And so if you're just listening to me, I'm kind of a big sort of guy. I was a college football player and, you know, being sensitive is not necessarily something I'm always known for perhaps. But I put together this photo montage of. Us together over the last 25 years. And one of my favorite songs is from Ben Folds titled "The Luckiest", which I think is the song that encapsulates best how I feel about my wife. I met her when I was 17 years old. I proposed to her when I was 21. How I came to meet this amazing human being when I was 17 years old is just the most fortunate bit of luck that I could have ever had.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  So I sung "The Luckiest" to this montage. I'm not a great singer. It was so cringey to do it because I was focused on how awkward I sounded, how terrible I sounded. When I played it to Jen, she was in tears. And part of my brain knew that. Like, part of my brain knew that she would see the love that I was trying to communicate and express to her in this. She would feel that.

• 34:08Laurie Santos?

  But even though Nick is an expert on the power of vulnerability, the other part of his brain was still screaming, "TMI, you suck. She's gonna hate it. Stop."

• 34:17Speaker 04

  This was the first time I'd ever sung to my wife, and so the avoidance voice was still really, really strong, and I had to ignore it. I had to push past it.

• 34:27Laurie Santos?

  Nick says that pushing past the avoidance voice is easier when you remember what psychologist Leslie John explained earlier, that the most meaningful acts of sharing often feel like oversharing. But decades of research demonstrate that your recipient is not going to judge you nearly as harshly as you assume. Remembering these findings gave Nick the evidence-based courage he needed to push through his cringe voice and serenade his wife. And in Nick's case, going a little TMI worked out nicely.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  She loved it because it signified warmth. It wasn't competence. She didn't expect me to be a great singer. It was signifying warmth.

• 35:01Speaker 05

  After 25 years, she knew.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  She kinda knew. She kinda knew.

• 35:06Laurie Santos?

  So what can we do to shut off that cringe voice more often? Nick's advice is to collect more of our own data on the benefits of TMI, to create our own kind learning environments, even though the act of doing so may feel painfully awkward in the moment.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  The fears you have about how these conversations will go are off, right? How do you calibrate those? You calibrate those with experience, with practice, with trying, running the experiment yourself. And my hope is that if you have practiced enough, you will have another voice, too. And that other voice is telling you, no, it'll be OK. You can sing the Ben Fold song to your wife, and she will love it. Even though you sound horrible, she will still love it.

• 35:50Laurie Santos?

  But wait, you might be thinking. It's one thing to overcome your worries about oversharing when you're singing on your 25th anniversary. But what about embarrassing moments of TMI at work, or during a job interview? Or when you're about to totally humiliate yourself in front of someone who hasn't vowed to love you through sickness and health? When we get back from the break, oversharing expert Leslie John will help us tackle when to choose TMI in these higher-stakes disclosure dilemmas, and when it might be worth holding things back. We'll hear her tips for handling the big boss levels of oversharing challenges when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.

• 36:28Laurie Santos?

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• 37:12Laurie Santos?

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• 38:39Laurie Santos?

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• 39:13Speaker 03

  If you do start experimenting more with revealing, you're going to cross the line sometimes.

• 39:19Laurie Santos?

  Psychologist and oversharing fan Leslie John argues that when facing a disclosure dilemma, it's often wise to err on the side of TMI rather than TLI. But even she admits that we need to strike some sort of balance.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  So the people that I think are best at navigating disclosure dilemmas, at revealing when they should and keeping mum when they should, are people that are really high in disclosure flexibility, which refers to the ability to navigate deftly from extreme openness to extreme guardedness.

• 39:49Laurie Santos?

  Healthy disclosure flexibility involves tracking more specific features of a disclosure situation when deciding how much to reveal. And one feature Leslie thinks we need to flexibly attend to is how long we've been in a given relationship.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  I think we're pretty adept at navigating how much to share in early relationships. When we're dating, we know we share a little bit and more. But where we tend to go awry is in long-term relationships, where we've been together so long that we know each other so well. But the problem is our confidence that we know the person outpaces our actual knowledge. And that's where the problem begins, because that's when we stop asking, we stop sharing, we assume. We really do need to keep sharing to keep that closeness alive.

• 40:33Laurie Santos?

  Similar problems can also crop up in long-term friendships. Leslie worries about one case in particular, in which we tend to go TLI with our friends, when we have good news. In fact, Leslie has found that more than 80% of people report intentionally hiding a success from a good friend.

• 40:50Speaker 03

  We're often very reticent to share successes with our close friends because we don't want them to feel envious and jealous because we care so much about them. If you don't tell them about the promotion, they'll probably find out anyways from a third party. And that's really bad for your relationship. Because think about it, when you find out third-hand about your friend's success, you think, "They thought I couldn't take it, or maybe we're not as close as I thought we were." But it's a very valid concern. You don't want to hurt the person's feelings when you have the good fortune. And so what can you do? How can you say it better to your friend? Well, first of all, timing is important. You want to catch them. When they're not in a rut, right?

• 41:31Laurie Santos?

  And when you do find the right moment, Leslie says you need to avoid the tendency to humble brag or to downplay your achievements.

• 41:38Speaker 03

  We often think we need to kind of take the edge off of a brag by making a faux self-deprecating comment or a faux display of humility, faux being the operative word here. People see right through it. We think that that's the best way to share our successes when we do work up the gumption. But we should actually just come out and say them. And the way you can say it in a kind way is to say, I worked really, really hard for this promotion and I feel really proud of it. And I'm so grateful that you were cheering me along the whole way. I couldn't do it without you, right? That's a way of sharing. And then we'll find that, once you do this, that also enhances your relationship.

• 42:20Laurie Santos?

  So that's how to disclose more effectively in friendships. But what about disclosure flexibility on the job? Well, Leslie has discovered that effective workplace disclosures require paying close attention to the status of your recipient. Let's say you're thinking about revealing something vulnerable to someone who's at the same level as you, say, a teammate or your work bestie. In those instances, Leslie's advice is definitely to err on the side of TMI. But what about cases in which you're in a higher status role than your recipient? When you're, say, the boss or in some position of authority? Surprisingly, the science suggests this is also a good time to err on the side of revealing. One study found that when leaders are honest about their own gaps in knowledge or skills, their teams grow to trust them more. Leaders who reveal more are also more likely

• 43:05Laurie Santos?

  to receive open feedback from their subordinates. So yes, even in high-status situations, it's still good to get a bit vulnerable.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  OK, but what about when you're not in a high-status situation? There, of course, we need to be more careful because our negative disclosures can be much more easily used against us. They can be misconstrued. One thing that I like to think about is the difference between transparency and vulnerability. Transparency is cognitive openness. So sharing the way your mind works, the way your thoughts work, how you think through things, that's a form of sharing that's pretty low-risk in the workplace and high reward. The part where you get into the dangerous territory is vulnerability, which is sharing maybe negative thoughts, feelings, which we need to be much more careful about at work.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  There's still a place for it, but if you think about what would be a nice rule of thumb, cognitive openness, transparency is, we should do more of that.

• 44:03Laurie Santos?

  Can you give me an example of the cognitive openness? Because I love the idea, but I think it's hard to see.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. So imagine you're in a job interview. So you're the candidate. You're in a low-status situation. And they ask you, "What's your greatest weakness?" What you can say is actually a real weakness, but in a careful way. Imagine your weakness is, like most of us, "I don't like being put on the spot in meetings." What you can say is, "You know, the way my mind works is I like to have a few moments to think through the key points I'm going to say. That's just the way my brain works. So if you give me even two minutes to prep for a meeting, I'll be way better." I mean, that's such a baller response because it's a true weakness, but the fact that you are on top of it shows that you're self-aware.

• 44:51Laurie Santos?

  This strategy of cognitive openness, of revealing part of your thought process rather than the negative thought itself, also works to deflect the negative consequences of a kind of oversharing that many of us worry about on the job, showing too much emotion. Let's take what is perhaps the most extreme version of an emotional overshare at work, suddenly bursting into tears.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  Crying is tricky. If you feel you are going to cry, you can say, "Look, I feel really passionate about this. I care so much about this that that's why I'm getting a bit upset about this because I care so much." And so when you comment on the feeling and why you're having it and attribute it to caring about the work, to passion, that makes it less likely that you will be perceived negatively for crying. Now, it's really tricky, especially when you're in a low-status situation. So it's best not to cry in those settings, but if you say, "This is why I'm crying," It can actually make you seem credible and therefore more competent because you're aware, right?

• 45:57Speaker 03

  And also, the person who is willing to say the thing is by definition confident. And so it really can be disarming in that way.

• 46:04Laurie Santos?

  In all of these cases, the research shows that we usually do better when we reveal something about what's going on inside us. Has all this work made you become more OK with TMI?

• 46:14Speaker 03

  100%, 1,000%, you know. I, you know, as I was writing the book, it really was such a meta experience because how can you write a book about revealing and not reveal about yourself? And so I was constantly, as I was writing it, thinking, is this too much? Hopefully, I got it mostly right. But if I didn't, that's also part of the point. We think that silence is the safe thing, that it's neutral, but it's not. And once I made that reframe, that silence is not neutral and this is always a choice, it's made me reveal more and I've benefited, I think, hugely.

• 46:48Laurie Santos?

  So that's our first Happiness Hot Take of the season. Oversharing ain't so bad, and we should be doing it way more often. TMI, shared with real people in real life, tends to build trust and connection, especially when it's done with a bit of care and disclosure flexibility. So the next time you're facing an in-real-life disclosure dilemma, remember that your inner cringe voice is lying to you, and what feels like oversharing is often just sharing. Next time on the Happiness Lab, I'll be continuing our Happiness Hot Take season with a hot take that even I have gotten wrong in the past. We'll turn to the college student mental health crisis and learn about new data that shows that the kids today might be all right, or at least as all right as the kids have ever been.

• 47:32Laurie Santos?

  It was really disorienting for us as researchers to be so wrong about our hypothesis. That's all next week on the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

• 47:47Laurie Santos?

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