This assignment started off by reading a few definitions of the word “humblebrag”. After this, we had to read the abstract, introduction, and discussion of Sezer, Gina, and Norton’s (2017) paper about humblebragging. Next, based on my last name, I had to read studies 1a, 1b, and 1c from the paper I just mentioned. Next we had to conduct our 1 hour chat with our chat groups, discussing the definition of humblebragging, whether each of us have experienced humblebragging, when and where did we experienced it, how we feel hearing someone else’s humblebrag, explaining the purpose of the paper we read and the general results from the abstract and discussion, explaining how each of the studies in the paper were conducted, what the results were, what the results suggest, and what we would tell a close friend the next time they humblebragged about the likely effects of their humblebrag. The assignment finished with completing our required group tasks, so I posted a transcript of the chat on canvas.
From the first document, they defined humblebragging as making a seemingly modest statement that is used to draw attention to one’s positive or impressive traits or accomplishments.
Moving on to the paper, rather than explaining each individual study, I will summarize most of the main points. The first takeaway was the humblebragging is very common in today’s society, with most people having reported hearing someone else do it. Additionally, complaint-based humble brags are more frequently used than humility-based humble brags, however, they are less effective. A main point of the study was that both of these forms of humble bragging have negative consequences, including reduced liking, perceived competence, and compliance with requests, and that straightforward bragging is more effective. So, even though humblebragging is utilized because people want to target sympathy and impress people, this does not end up working on either of these levels.
Moving on to the chat group, we started off by describing the definition of humblebragging, which I listed earlier in the post. Me and both my other chat group members have all experienced humblebragging and gave examples, and one of the members, Seraph, detailed how Asian people may take part in this because they are generally modest and so they do not like to outright brag. We all agreed that we do not like hearing humblebragging, and it makes us all frustrated when others do it.
After this, we moved on to describing the specific studies from the paper, I explained 1a, 1b, and 1c, Erin described studies 2 and 4, and Seraph explained studies 3a and 3b. These explanations were long-winded and I do not think it would make much sense to include all of our explanations in the post. However, from these studies, we learned about all the main takeaways of the paper, which I discussed in the 3rd paragraph of this post.
Reflecting on this assignment, I appreciated the first document that gave a definition of humblebragging and gave some examples, because I had never actually heard the term before. I definitely had experienced the concept before, but never had thought to put a label to it. So, starting out by learning the definition was a good idea.
Next, I think the paper was very well written, and easy to understand. At first I misread the instructions and actually read the whole paper, so it took me a super long time. However, I felt that I really learned some things from it, and that I could apply the results to my daily life. Now, when I recognize people who are humblebragging, I will know the negative consequences associated with it, and I can let them know.
Additionally, I enjoyed the structure of the chat group. It was a good mix of summarization and applying the material to our own experiences. For example, summarizing the definition of the word as well as explaining how all the studies were conducted were both valuable parts of the assignment, to make sure we understood the study and the concepts related to it. Building off this, we had to talk about our own experiences with the humblebragging, as well as what we would tell a friend in the future if we heard them taking part in it, which allowed me to put my own personal spin on things.
This topic was very interesting in general too. This is not something I really hear people discussing, and I certainly had not seen any previous research related to humblebragging. It is a great example of Professor Gernsbacher finding a great variety of topics for her students to explore. It allows me to maintain interest in engaging with the material!
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