Sharing experiences with others makes them more INTENSE: Carrying out tasks in a group amplifies how they make you feel
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Sharing experiences with others makes them more intense, whether they are good or bad, experts claim.
And shared experiences are intensified even if they happen in silence, or with someone who an individual has only just met.
A new study shows that people who share experiences with another person rate those events as more pleasant or unpleasant than those who undergo the experience on their own.
Sharing experiences with others (illustrated with a stock picture) makes them more intense, whether they are good or bad, experts claim. And shared experiences are intensified even if they happen in silence, or with someone who an individual has only just met
Psychological scientist Erica Boothby, of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, said: 'We often think that what matters in social life is being together with others, but we've found it also really matters what those people are doing.
'When people are paying attention to the same pleasant thing, whether the Mona Lisa, or a song on the radio, our research shows that the experience is much more pleasurable.
'And the reverse is true of unpleasant experiences - not sharing them makes them more pleasurable, while sharing them makes them worse.'
Ms Boothby and her colleagues set out to explore the consequences of sharing experiences that unfold socially but silently.
In their first study, 23 female college students went to a lab and met another participant who would be completing the study at the same time.
Unknown to the students, the 'other participant' was actually part of the research team.
In one experiment, students tasted chocolate at the same time as another person and on their own. Although the chocolate pieces were identical, the students tended to report the 'shared' chocolate as being more flavoursome. The experiment suggests that sharing food (pictured) makes it tastier
The pairs were told that they would engage in several activities, including tasting chocolate and looking at a book of paintings, side-by-side on a table.
The students tasted one of the chocolates at the same time as the other participant and once while the researcher was looking at the book of paintings.
After the students tasted both chocolates, the experiments ended 'early' before they got a chance to look at the artwork, according to the journal Psychological Science
The chocolates were taken from the same block to ensure they could be compared fairly.
The researchers suggest that sharing an experience with someone else, even silently, such as looking at art in a gallery (pictured) makes us more attuned to what we are sensing and perceiving
Students reported liking the chocolate they had tasted at the same time as the other participant more than the chocolate they had tasted while the other participant was looking at the book.
Although the chocolate pieces were identical, the students tended to report the 'shared' chocolate as being more flavoursome, which suggests that the mere act of sharing may influence how things are actually sensed or perceived by us.
To find out whether sharing makes any experience more pleasant or unpleasant, the researchers tasked another group of students to taste a bitter 'chocolate substitute,' which was really a square of 90 per cent dark chocolate deemed to taste unpleasant.
This time, the students said that they liked the 'shared' chocolate less.
They also reported feeling more absorbed in the tasting experience and more in tune with the other participant when they tasted the chocolate at the same time.
The researchers suggest that sharing an experience with someone else, even silently, may focus our attention, making us more attuned to what we are sensing and perceiving.
Ms Boothby added: 'When people think of shared experience, what usually comes to mind is being with close others, such as friends or family, and talking with them.
'We don't realise the extent to which we are influenced by people around us whom we don't know and aren't even communicating with.'
The researchers claim their findings may have significant implications for social life in a world that is filled with distractors.
Ms Boothby explained: 'We text friends while at a party, check our Twitter feed while out to dinner, and play Sudoku while watching TV with family - without meaning to, we are un-sharing experiences with the people around us.
'A pleasant experience that goes unshared is a missed opportunity to focus on the activity we and others are doing and give it a boost.'
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