Stories of Failure Get Told (More Than Success Stories)
When a friend tells you they didn't get the job, do you mention that you did? Most people instinctively know the answer — and new research published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes explains why. A major multi-institution study, which I co-authored, reveals that people systematically shape what they share about their own successes and failures based not on self-interest, but on a desire to protect how others feel.
The paper, "Responses to Outcome Disclosure: People Asymmetrically Disclose or Hide Their Outcomes to Protect Others' Emotions," was co-authored with Emily Prinsloo (Rice University), Irene Scopelliti (Bayes Business School, City St George, University of London) and George Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon University). Across nine studies involving 8,229 participants — including controlled experiments, open-ended written responses and 473 live conversation dyads — the research team uncovered a consistent and previously undocumented pattern in how people respond when others share personal news.
What the Research Found
Prior theories of disclosure have focused largely on the person who initiates a conversation. This research examines the responder — the person who, after hearing someone else's news, must decide what to reveal in return. The results challenge longstanding assumptions that such decisions are primarily about managing one's own image.
The study identifies three key patterns. First, people strongly prefer to disclose outcomes that match the other person's. If a colleague shares a rejection, respondents are far more likely to share their own rejection than their acceptance. Second — and more revealingly — this matching tendency is not symmetric: people are significantly more inclined to share matching failures than matching successes. Disclosing a shared failure is perceived as emotionally supportive, normalizing a difficult experience; disclosing a shared success, by contrast, adds little emotional value and may even deflate the other person's mood.
Third, when outcomes do not match, people are more willing to share bad news following someone's good news than to share good news following someone's bad news. The anticipated emotional harm of disclosing a success to someone who has just failed is a powerful deterrent — one that overrides the natural reciprocal impulse to share.
Beyond Whether to Disclose — How People Disclose
The research goes further by examining not just whether people disclose, but how. When participants chose to share positive news in response to someone's failure, they wrote longer messages, were more likely to offer help or advice and frequently used apologetic language — attributing their success to luck or external factors. Some participants in live interactions even chose to deceive, omitting or misrepresenting their outcome entirely to avoid causing distress. Timing also mattered: non-matching disclosures were significantly more likely to be delayed, with responders first offering emotional support before — or instead of — revealing their own news.
Implications for Organizations and Everyday Life
The implications extend well beyond individual relationships. In organizational settings, these patterns may explain why employees hesitate to share career successes with peers who have recently missed a promotion, or why teams find it difficult to celebrate wins openly during periods of collective struggle. Understanding these dynamics can help leaders design environments where both successes and setbacks are discussed more openly and authentically.
The research also found that these patterns were robust across relationship types — acquaintances and close friends, peers and supervisors — and across domains including health, career and financial outcomes. Crucially, the effects were stronger when participants reported liking their conversation partner, confirming that empathy, rather than strategic impression management, is the primary driver.
