- Venting to a friend about another friend can help win his or her affection
- But being angry can actually make you look worse
It may feel naughty, but complaining about a friend can make other friends like you more, research shows.
Experts have found that venting frustrations about another friend can be an effective way to win that friend’s affection.
However, it is advisable to take it easy on aggression, as being angry or belittling the ‘target friend’ can make you look worse, they found.
Psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) asked participants to listen to recordings of a fictional friend expressing frustration about a mutual friend who canceled at the last minute, gossiped, or reacted negatively.
Participants were then asked to rate their feelings about the speaker and the target friend on an 11-point sliding scale.
It may feel naughty, but complaining about a friend can make other friends like you more, a study finds (stock image)
Analysis showed that participants who heard the speaker complain about a friend’s cancellation rated the speaker better than the recipient.
However, this was not the case when speakers disparaged the target or spread gossip.
Another experiment found that expressing frustration actually backfired when researchers suggested that the person expressing frustration was secretly a competitor of the friend they were targeting.
In these cases, participants no longer liked the person in question more than the target person.
The results show that expressing criticism only makes the speaker more likable if listeners do not perceive the speaker as having aggressive intentions toward the recipient, the researchers said.
Therefore, expressing frustration can be an effective competitive tool to win a friend’s affection, precisely because it is not recognized as a competitive tool.
Lead author Jaimie Krems said: ‘We didn’t have a good explanation for what expressing our grief does to us.
Experts have found that venting frustrations to one friend about another friend can be an effective competitive tool to win their affection (stock image)
‘So we tested a novel idea: Under certain conditions, expressing your frustration can make the people you express your frustration with more supportive of you than the people you express your frustration with.
‘While people are willing to admit that we compete for our romantic partners’ limited time and affection, people seem less willing to admit that we compete for friends.
“But if being relatively more liked means getting more support from friends, then we should expect some competition between friends, whether we like it or not.”
The benefits of being relatively more well-liked by your friends may include receiving preferential treatment, they added.
For example, having friends is linked to better health, well-being and longevity.
Previous research has shown that women who gossip about others do so out of jealousy and low self-esteem.
Researchers found that women were more likely to report higher levels of romantic jealousy when a “target woman” was considered attractive.
This in turn was related to a greater chance of gossip about it.’
The new findings are published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.