Men less likely to share negative experiences than women, reveals study

Ever wondered how both men and women process and share negative and positive information respectively?

If as a man you ever felt that sharing negative information with other people was relatively hard for you, then you are not alone!

A recent study from Carnegie Mellon University, Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), and Bocconi University has thrown light on the contrasting behaviours of men and women and how they act when they have bad news to share.

The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, revealed that men were less likely to share negative information than women.

“The results from our studies revealed a consistent, and to the best of our knowledge not previously identified, nuanced pattern, wherein the tendency for women to disclose more than men depends crucially on the nature of the information shared. These findings can help make sense of the existing literature, as well as clarify some existing stereotypes, around gender differences in disclosure,” Dr Erin Carbone, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and first author of the study, said.

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Given their contrasting behaviours regarding the dissemination of information, men and women are differentially advantaged by, or exposed to, the positive and negative consequences of information sharing. 

The research, which involved more than 1,000 participants, comprised three experiments which showed that men were less willing to share negative experiences than women and withheld information. 

The study suggested that this behaviour depicted by men was primarily due to concerns about how they were perceived by the people around them.

On the other hand, findings revealed that women were more comfortable with their level of revelation.

“Disclosure is increasingly prevalent and permanent in the digital age. The advent of social media and digital communication channels has enabled unprecedented levels of information sharing, which is accompanied by an array of social and psychological consequences. Our results show that gender remains an important fault line when it comes to the desire and propensity to disclose negative information, and men may be differentially advantaged by, or vulnerable to, the consequences of information sharing compared to women," Professor Irene Scopelliti, Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) and one of the authors of the study, said.

However, men and women developed similar numbers of occurrences of wanting to share positive information.