Humblebragging: A Distinct – and Ineffective – Self-Presentation Strategy

Humblebragging – bragging masked by a complaint – is a distinct and, given the rise of social media, increasingly ubiquitous form of self-promotion. We show that although people often choose to humblebrag when motivated to make a good impression, it is an ineffective self-promotional strategy. Five studies offer both correlational and causal evidence that humblebragging has both global costs – reducing liking and perceived sincerity – and specific costs: it is even ineffective in signaling the specific trait that that a person wants to promote. Moreover, humblebragging is less effective than simply complaining, because complainers are at least seen as sincere. Despite people’s belief that combining bragging and complaining confers the benefits of both self-promotion strategies, humblebragging fails to pay off

Hiding Success

Self-promotion is common in everyday life. Yet, across seven studies (N = 1,672) examining a broad range of personal and professional successes, we find that individuals often hide their successes from others and that such hiding has harmful relational consequences. We document these effects among close relational partners, strangers, and within hypothetical relationships. In Study 1, we find that targets feel less close to and more insulted by communicators who hide rather than share their successes. Conversely, sharing success increases closeness, despite also triggering envy. In Study 2, we find that hiding is more costly than sharing success, even when the target does not learn about the act of hiding. That is, hiding success harms relationships both when the success is eventually discovered and when it is not. In Studies 3 and 4, we explore the mechanism underlying these interpersonal costs: Targets infer that communicators have paternalistic motives when they hide their success, which leads them to feel insulted. Studies 5 and 6 explore this mechanism in greater detail by documenting the contextual cues that elicit inferences of paternalistic motives. While a large body of existing research highlights the negative consequences of sharing one’s accomplishments with others, our research demonstrates that sharing is often superior to hiding. In doing so, we shed new light on the consequences of paternalism and the relational costs of hiding information in everyday communication