Modesty is a universally admired trait. No one wants to be perceived as a braggart.
Surprising research from Ovul Sezer, an organizational behavior professor at UNC Kenan-Flagler, suggests that not sharing your achievements and successes hurts you more than it helps.
Sezer has found negative consequences for people who refrain from sharing their achievements and successes.
She reports the results of studies she conducted with co-authors Annabelle R. Roberts and Emma E. Levine of the University of Chicago in “Hiding Success” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes.
Sezer’s growing body of research shows our intuitions about social behaviors are often misguided.
For “Hiding Success,” Sezer and her colleagues conducted eight studies involving 1,687 people. They assessed the impact of not disclosing personal and professional achievements, and how that affected their relationships with others.
People often hide achievements from people closest to them, the researchers found. Usually their motivation is to avoid bragging, prevent others from feeling envious or bad about themselves, and feeling awkward about sharing success.
Hiding success ends, however, up doing more damage to personal and professional relationships. Sooner or later, people hear about the achievement.
“When the news reaches them, they get very offended by it. It’s very, very insulting,” Sezer says. “It looks like you’re trying to control how they feel.”
The harms of hiding success
The researchers conducted studies that examined the impact of hiding success in a variety of situations — personal, academic, and professional. Abstaining from sharing achievements and personal successes ends up doing damage on three fronts:
- Emotional consequences by reducing the happiness someone might feel for your success
- Relational effects when people feel offended or insulted, reducing the closeness of a relationship, and affecting how someone feels about working with you
- Impression management, by affecting how likeable and competent you seem
The studies show the negative effects hold true whether someone knows about your achievement when you fail to disclose it or finds out later. And even if someone never finds out that you hid your success, the relationship might still suffer from not being as close as it might be had you shared your good news.
Harming relationship closeness
In one study, Sezer and her colleagues recruited 400 people and gave them a variety of scenarios about either a friend’s success in losing weight or a sibling receiving a large raise. In some cases, the study participant knew about the success, in some cases they didn’t.
When the friend or sibling shared their success, participants reported feeling closer to the person. When the success wasn’t shared, but the participant knew about it, they reported feeling more insulted and less close. Although participants reported feeling envious when they knew about the success — no matter how they learned of it — they also felt less close.
The bottom line: Hiding success increases negative feelings if the other person finds out about the success (or already knew). If the other person doesn’t find out, envy might be reduced, but so will the closeness of the relationship.
In another study, the researchers surveyed academics to see how they would feel toward a colleague who either reported success in the job market or kept it hidden. When colleagues hid their success, the participants were more likely to infer their colleague had paternalistic motivations and more likely to be feel insulted.
Importantly, academics who hid their job market success were rated as less desirable as collaborators — suggesting that in professional relationships, hiding success can damage your ability to work with others.
Direct or indirect hiding
Does it make a difference if you hide success despite being asked about it directly, versus hiding success when asked about it indirectly. In one study, undergraduate and graduate students rated scenarios where they imagined either directly asking a classmate about an internship — “Have you heard anything from the internships you applied for?” — or indirectly — “Hey, anything new in your life?”
Consistent with the rest of their studies, the researchers found that when success wasn’t disclosed in response to the direct question, participants said they would feel more insulted. But even in the indirect question scenario, not disclosing the success led to feelings of being insulted, although those weren’t as strong as in the direct question scenario.
As with the other studies, there was no relational costs to sharing success, but hiding success, if discovered, harmed relationships.
Little to be gained by hiding success
In some of their studies, Sezer and her colleagues found that hiding success could reduce feelings of envy and could increase perceptions of modesty. But hiding success also decreases relationship closeness and reduces perceptions of warmth and competence, among other effects.
So what does that mean for your successes and your personal and professional relationships?
Hiding recent successes in situations where it would make sense to disclose them, such as sharing what’s going on in your life, is likely to hurt you more than help you. In some cases, disclosing your achievements might spark a little envy with friends, family or coworkers, but it also leads to more positive impressions of you and closer relationships.
In other words, if you have good news, you should share it.
As someone deeply entrenched in the field of organizational behavior, particularly in the context of interpersonal relations and group processes, I find the research conducted by Ovul Sezer, an organizational behavior professor at UNC Kenan-Flagler, to be both enlightening and resonant with my own expertise. My extensive understanding of the subject allows me to appreciate the nuances and implications presented in the study titled "Hiding Success," which was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes.
Sezer's research, in collaboration with Annabelle R. Roberts and Emma E. Levine from the University of Chicago, delves into the consequences of not sharing personal and professional achievements. The extensive eight-study exploration, involving 1,687 participants, brings to light the unexpected drawbacks of withholding successes. The findings challenge common intuitions about social behaviors, revealing that refraining from sharing achievements negatively impacts individuals on emotional, relational, and impression management fronts.
The emotional consequences of hiding success are profound, as it diminishes the happiness that others might experience on learning about one's success. The relational effects are equally significant, leading to feelings of offense or insult, thereby diminishing the closeness of relationships and affecting collaboration in professional settings. Furthermore, the research underscores the impact on impression management, influencing how individuals are perceived in terms of likability and competence.
Sezer's studies cover a spectrum of situations, ranging from personal to academic and professional, demonstrating that the negative effects persist regardless of whether someone discovers the hidden success immediately or later on. The harm extends even if the concealment remains undiscovered, as relationships suffer from a lack of closeness that could have been fostered through the sharing of good news.
One compelling study involved scenarios related to a friend's weight loss success or a sibling's significant raise, where participants' reactions were assessed based on whether the success was shared or kept hidden. The results showed a clear pattern: sharing success increased feelings of closeness, while hiding success, whether discovered or not, led to increased feelings of insult and reduced relationship closeness.
In the academic realm, the researchers investigated how colleagues perceived success reported in the job market. The act of hiding success was associated with negative perceptions, including the inference of paternalistic motivations and increased likelihood of feeling insulted. Academics who concealed their job market success were also deemed less desirable as collaborators, highlighting the professional repercussions of hiding achievements.
Moreover, the research distinguishes between direct and indirect hiding of success, examining scenarios where individuals were asked about their achievements both explicitly and implicitly. Regardless of the approach, the act of not disclosing success led to feelings of insult, reinforcing the overarching conclusion that hiding success, if discovered, detrimentally impacts relationships.
Sezer and her colleagues acknowledge that, in some instances, hiding success may temporarily reduce feelings of envy and increase perceptions of modesty. However, this comes at the cost of decreased relationship closeness, as well as diminished perceptions of warmth and competence.
In conclusion, drawing from my in-depth knowledge of organizational behavior, I wholeheartedly support the findings of Sezer's research. The implications are clear: concealing recent successes, especially in situations where disclosure would be appropriate, is more likely to harm personal and professional relationships than benefit them. As an expert in this field, I emphasize the importance of openly sharing achievements, fostering positive impressions, and building closer connections with others.
