According to science, your meanest friends might be your best friends.
A recent study found that your closest friends may actually be “cruel to be kind.” In other words, when they say mean things, they do so with your best interests in heart, not any intention to hurt your feelings or bring you down.
The study was published in Science Daily on May 24 by the Association for Psychological Science. The article summary does an excellent job of summarizing the findings of the researchers:
“People may try to make someone else feel negative emotions if they think experiencing those emotions will be beneficial in the long run.”
To truly understand what this means for your friendships, you need to take a closer look.
Belén López-Pérez, the psychological scientist behind the study, performed his research at the University of Plymouth. López-Pérez explained:
“We have shown that people can be ‘cruel to be kind’ – that is, they may decide to make someone feel worse if this emotion is beneficial for that other person, even if this does not entail any personal benefit for them.”
This is a very interesting addition to the world of psychological science, as the “results expand our knowledge of the motivations underlying emotion regulation between people.”
This wasn’t the first study to look at interactions where one person tries to alter another’s mood, but it was the first to draw this conclusion.
Previous studies had discovered that people sometimes try to worsen the mood of others to achieve a personal gain of their own. López-Pérez and his colleagues, Michaela Gummerum and Laura Howells, had already looked at altruistic behavior. This previous research led them to wonder if altruistic reasons could ever be the motivation behind worsening someone else’s mood. López-Pérez describes how they started the research:
“We identified several everyday examples where this might be the case – for instance, inducing fear of failure in a loved one who is procrastinating instead of studying for an exam.”
Their hypothesis was that by having participants look at the perspective of someone else, this might increase the chances of selecting the other person to undergo a negative experience if it would help that person reach a goal.
More research backs up how influential friends can be.
They conducted a study in the lab with 140 adults, where they played a computer game against an anonymous person, Player A, who actually didn’t exist. Participants received a note that Player A had supposedly written and were either told to stay detached or imagine Player A’s feelings. They then had to make choices for the game, which either had a confrontational or avoidance goal.
Following the game, the participants rated the extent to which they wanted Player A to listen to a series of music clips or read game descriptions. There was also the potential for a reward.
Interestingly enough, participants that emphasized with the Player A focused on clips and descriptions that led to the appropriate emotions for the player based on their game.
“What was surprising was that affect worsening was not random but emotion-specific.”
To put that research more simply, the study suggested that empathy led participants to select negative emotions that would end up helping Player A win the game.
As López-Pérez explained:
“These findings shed light on social dynamics, helping us to understand, for instance, why we sometimes may try to make our loved ones feel bad if we perceive this emotion to be useful to achieve a goal.”
In the real world, the results indicate that when your friend makes you feel bad about not studying or gives you a hard time about the dress you chose to wear, they may be doing so to help you in the end. They are being mean, but their goal is to ensure you pass that test or have confidence and look as good as you can.
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