“Have you ever been at a party where someone has talked about themselves without pause? You may have thought this a case of ‘too much information,’ but science is begging to differ.

You know that guy in the pub that goes on and on and on? You wouldn’t believe how happy he is. SOURCE: Jaysun

“According to new research from Harvard University, disclosing information about yourself may be intrinsically rewarding.

“We know humans are highly social beings, and that we need social contact and communication for our fundamental well-being. An important part of social contact is feeling connected and sharing our experiences with others.

“In fact, studies suggest approximately 30-40% of our speech output is devoted to sharing our subjective experiences with others.

“Anyone following Twitter or status updates on Facebook can attest to this, as surveys of posts to social media sites show more than 80% of status updates are announcements of a person’s immediate experiences.

“But little did you know that your friend’s update attesting to the fact they were eating freshly grown tomatoes from their own garden before picking up their son from school was actually causing a burst of activity in the pleasure centres of their brain.

“The Harvard researchers were intrigued by the phenomenon of self-disclosure in speech, and studied it by examining brain responses in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner while people disclosed their own opinions or judged the opinions of other people.

“When people discussed their own opinions there was activation in the same brain regions that typically become active when we receive intrinsic rewards such as food, money and sex.

“Similarly, activity in these same reward networks was greater when people considered their own personality traits, compared to when they considered those of others.

“In fact, researchers compared brain responses from a previous task in which people had received monetary rewards and found there was a considerable overlap of activity in the same regions as when they engaged in self-disclosure.” To continue reading this article from The Conversation, click here.