In relationships, the vast majority of us draw lines around the places where we’re receptive to sharing our feelings and where we’re not.
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But what influences whether we’re open to divulging what we feel or lean toward keeping our emotional world under wraps? Likewise, what sways whether someone we’re close to is ready to tell us about their feelings instead of deciding to withhold what’s happening inside? Is there something we’re doing (or could do) that might help open the door to a loved one’s inner emotional life?
In a newly released study, a pair of investigators examined this question by advancing prior research in this area. They referred to earlier work establishing that we humans tend to share what we feel when we believe the person we’re talking to really values our wellness; these individuals are “communal partners.” But why is this the case? The research team looked at two potential reasons. The first is that people decide to disclose more when they sense that the person listening is doing their best to grasp the emotions they’re trying to express. (i.e., “empathic effort”). The second is that people reveal more when they think the person on the receiving end can perceive their emotions correctly (“interpersonal accuracy”).
The researchers asked people who participated in the study about their connection to five individuals, based on varying degrees of how much those individuals would probably feel invested in that person’s wellness. For example, it’s pretty likely that an immediate member of your family (e.g., spouse, sibling, parent) or your closest friend is going to feel more personally interested in your wellness than a more casual friend or someone you merely chat with occasionally at social gatherings. The researchers also asked people in the study about how much they believe each of these five individuals values their well-being (i.e., “communal motivation”), how open they think they’d be to sharing various emotions with each person, how much they believe each person would strive to comprehend how they feel (i.e., “empathic effort“), and how much they think each person would correctly gauge what they’re feeling (i.e., “interpersonal accuracy”).
The study’s results echoed prior work that showed people feel more inclined to open up to individuals who really seem invested in how they’re doing. In addition, the researchers found that both the idea that someone would really seek to get what they’re feeling and the notion that an individual would correctly pick up on what they’re feeling were each linked with greater odds of opening up to that individual. More specifically, the researchers found that beliefs about accuracy and effort each accounted for the link between someone thinking that an individual values their wellness and a heightened inclination to share their feelings with that person. This was true for almost all emotions the researchers considered (i.e., gratitude, sadness, anxiety, anger, pride, and happiness). When it came to guilt, the researchers found that only accuracy explained the connection between a person sensing someone is concerned with their well-being and wanting to open up.
Of course, the researchers were right to point out that their study only explored how much people believed they would share, which could be different than how much they’d share their feelings in reality. Also, they mentioned that the nature of their research doesn’t make it possible to talk about causality
Having said that, as they also highlighted, their work does suggest that when we really apply ourselves to grasping where someone is coming from and we’re able to get it right, we just might help the people in our lives open the door to us, allowing us to step into their emotional world a little bit more.
