Moaners rejoice! Ranting with your friends can actually make you happier, study finds
- A new study has shed light on the surprising benefits of moaning
- Researchers claim that ranting with your friends can make you happier
From Finding Nemo’s Marlin to Harry Potter’s Moaning Myrtle, many movie characters are known for their constant whining.
This is usually seen as an undesirable characteristic.
However, a new study has shed light on the surprising benefits of moaning.
Researchers at Southwest University claim that ranting with your friends can make you happier.
“Our study highlights the important role played by strong friendships, which can alleviate these negative emotions and strengthen interpersonal relationships through seeking social support,” said Xuemei Li, lead author of the study.
Researchers from Southwest University claim that bantering with your friends can make you happier (stock image)
In their research, the team wanted to understand the effects of co-rumination: excessive discussion of negative issues.
“Co-rumination is considered a form of communication with interaction effects and has attracted the attention of many researchers,” the team wrote in their study, published in Personality and individual differences.
In the first part of their study, the researchers surveyed 2,614 high school students about their friendship qualities, life satisfaction and depression.
The team then examined the relationship between life satisfaction and co-rumination, which was broken down into two categories: supportive discussions and obsessive whining.
From Finding Nemo’s Marlin to Harry Potter’s Moaning Myrtle, many movie characters are known for their constant whining
The results showed that co-ruminations – especially having supportive discussions – were positively associated with life satisfaction.
‘Co-rumination was positively correlated with life satisfaction, suggesting that “the more we co-ruminate, the happier we are,” the researchers wrote.
Meanwhile, obsessive whining was only seen in girls and not boys, and was found to be negatively associated with life satisfaction.
Interestingly, the researchers found that the quality of the friendship mitigated the negative effect of obsessive nagging.
‘[This] indirectly suggested that “the more we co-ruminate, the happier we are,” the researchers added.
The researchers hope that the findings can help shape targeted intervention methods.
“Future studies can investigate the root causes of these differences and develop precise intervention strategies,” they concluded.