TREVOR WATKINS
Good things happen at work all the time. But should you share the news of your good fortune with your colleagues? Recent evidence helps us understand the upsides and downsides of sharing good news at work.
Employees routinely experience positive events such as completing a task, being praised by a supervisor, obtaining a favorable customer review, or selling a product. In fact, research shows that workplace positive events are more than twice as common as their negative counterparts, according to a study published in 2012 in Academy of Management Journal.
One natural response to a positive event is to tell others about the good news. People share their good news between 60 and 80 percent of the time, mostly with relationship partners, according to a 2010 study in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Sharing good news is beneficial for many reasons, ranging from boosting one’s mood to strengthening relationships, according to American Psychological Association studies. Broadly speaking, social psychology tells us that sharing positive events is mostly beneficial.