A study by UCLA psychologists shows that venting frustrations to friends can make you more likable and strengthen friendships, provided it’s done without aggressive intent.
Venting about your frustrations with one friend to another isn’t just cathartic; it can actually deepen your bonds with the listener, according to new research by psychologists at UCLA. Their study indicates that under specific conditions, venting can enhance the listener’s perception of the venter and foster closer relationships.
“Since the 1950s, we’ve known the Freudian catharsis explanation for venting is wrong. It can feel good to vent, but venting doesn’t reliably decrease anger and sometimes even amplifies anger,” lead author Jaimie Krems, an associate professor of psychology at UCLA, said in a news release. “We didn’t have a good explanation for what venting does for us. So we tested a novel alliance view of venting — that under certain parameters, venting can make the people we vent to support us over the people we vent about.”
The research, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, comes at a time when loneliness has been declared an epidemic by the U.S. Surgeon General, highlighting the need to better understand the dynamics of friendship and how people might compete for emotional bonds in non-romantic relationships.
The study’s experiments involved participants listening to vignettes where a friend vented or gossiped about another mutual friend. In scenarios where the venter expressed frustration in a non-aggressive manner, listeners reported liking the venter more than the target of the venting. However, if the frustration was expressed with overt anger or derogation, the listeners did not show a preference for the venter.
The participants rated their feelings about the speaker and the target on an 11-point sliding scale after hearing complaints such as, “I’m so frustrated and hurt right now…” when venting about a mutual friend canceling on them. Those in the derogation condition heard, “I’m so frustrated and angry right now…” The study found that non-aggressive venting resulted in the speaker being better liked compared to when they derogated the target.
The findings have significant implications, suggesting that venting can be a strategic tool in boosting one’s likability and securing better interpersonal support. The benefits of being better liked by friends extend beyond just social satisfaction, potentially improving economic mobility, health, well-being and longevity, the researchers noted.
“As much as people readily admit that we compete for romantic partners’ finite time and affection, people seem less willing to admit to competing for friends,” added Krems. “But if being relatively better liked means getting better support from friends, then we should expect some friend competition, whether or not we like that it exists.”
Nevertheless, venting can backfire if listeners perceive the venter as having aggressive intentions or if the subject of venting is seen as trivial. The researchers suggest that the subtlety of such social maneuvers lies in not being overtly recognized as competitive behavior.