2.7 Sharing and Social Connectedness: How Different Ways of Sharing Affect Social Connection

Session Submission Type: Special Session

Session Overview

Sharing is ubiquitous, and it has become an essential part of consumers’ lives. The advancement of social media and smartphones has enabled consumers to share personal experiences, opinions, and resources with others at the click of a button. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp handle 60 billion messages a day, and firms like H&M and Sephora use these apps for one-on-one real-time conversations with customers. Moreover, consumers can now share money via Venmo and Google Wallet and car rides with other customers via Uber and Lyft.
Given the prevalence of sharing, it is important to understand how it affects consumers’ perceptions of and relationship with others. Prior research has shown that sharing is integral to building relationships (Min, Liu, & Kim, 2017; Reis et al., 2010; Belk, 2009). However, not all sharing is created equal; certain types of sharing are more effective at bringing people together than others. Yet we know little about what specific strategies are successful for connecting people, and which may backfire or push people apart.
In this session, we ask: what sharing strategies do people use to facilitate relationship building?; what are the consequences of these sharing strategies?; and what factors moderate their effectiveness? Four papers look at how different types of sharing—from jokes to gossip to goods—influence interpersonal perception and social connectedness.
The first two papers examine the positive and negative effects of sharing negative content. First, Critcher, Jung, and O’Donnell examine how self-deprecation, or putting oneself down in a lighthearted way, affects perceptions of the sharer. In contrary to self-deprecators’ intuition that making fun of themselves signals humility and authenticity, recipients believe that self-deprecators are actually less good at both skilled and unskilled domains. Next, Barasch, Berman, and Yoon show how sharing negative content, in the form of gossip, can sometimes be socially connecting. Specifically, they find that sharing negative judgments about others can increase liking and trust of the sharer, as long as the recipient agrees and the comments make the speaker seem discerning.
The next two papers look at how sharing positive content can both foster and undermine feelings of closeness. Sezer et al. show that sharing inside jokes can make people feel more identified and connected with their group. However, outsiders who witness inside jokes have less motivation to contribute to and interact with the group. Finally, Wilson, Santana and Paharia find that the method of sharing also matters. In particular, giving and receiving goods in physical (vs. digital) form can make people feel closer to each other by increasing perceived psychological ownership.
Together, these papers provide a better understanding of how sharing affects consumers’ connection with others. We contribute to this topic by examining different sharing strategies (self-deprecation and jokes), the valence of shared content (gossip), and the method of sharing (physical vs. digital). This session will provide guidance for marketers on how to manage customer relationships through various methods of conversation, and will be of interest to consumer researchers studying word of mouth, social connection, and judgment and decision-making.

Sub Track

• Special Sessions

Individual Presentations

• Self-Deprecation Signals Humility, but Not as Much as Self-Deprecators Assume - Clayton R Critcher, University of California Berkeley, USA; Michael O'Donnell, University of California Berkeley, USA; Minah Jung, New York University, USA

• Speaking ill of Others: When Negatively-Valenced Gossip Fosters Social Connection - Alixandra Barasch, New York University, USA; Jonathan Zev Berman, London Business School, UK; Heeyoung Yoon, New York University, USA

• Inside Jokes: Humor as social exclusion - Ovul Sezer, University of North Carolina, USA; Brad Bitterly, University of Pennsylvania, USA; Alison Wood Brooks, Harvard Business School, USA; Maurice Schweitzer, University of Pennsylvania, USA; Michael Norton, Harvard Business School, USA

• Give Me Something of Yours: The Downside of Digital (vs. Physical) Exchanges - Anne Wilson, Harvard Business School, USA; Shelle Santana, Harvard Business School, USA; Neeru Paharia, Georgetown University, USA

Session Chair

• Heeyoung Yoon, New York University, USA