The Art of Sharing: Tomatoes & True Love - What We Value

Okay, so, here's the thing about sharing, right? Like, you don't always think about it, but it's kinda a big deal. I was just thinking about this because, you know how dating apps are? My brother, Eric, was swiping, just swiping away, and he stumbles across this woman's profile, Laura. Beautiful, super smart, like, a scientist, but also, get this, she's in an '80s workout class, like, totally going for it. Anyway, Eric, being all smitten, he spends extra money on the app to send her a virtual rose. And then, get this, he forwards me the voicemail she left him! In this amazing British accent, she's talking about how great cherry tomatoes are. Like, "a good tomato," but she said it "toe-mah-toe," "is a thing of beauty." I was like, "Eric, you gotta marry her!"

So, you might be wondering, why is Eric sharing this random voicemail? Well, I think he was just, like, so excited about her and he wanted to share that feeling. And, he knew I love tomatoes.

But that little thing, sharing something you're excited about, it's so common. And it’s actually a building block of relationships. Think about your last 24 hours. Did you tell a friend about your day? Share your expertise at work? Post something on social media? You know, showing off your cat, or maybe a vacation pic where you looked good, I mean, not to make anyone jealous or anything, but… you know. Or maybe it was something more serious. Like, seeing news about wildfires or floods, or, just, conflict in the world. You called a friend, shared an article, maybe even a "hot take," even if you weren’t actually that outraged, you wanted to show people you care.

Sharing can also be quiet and intimate. I remember my parents' wedding anniversary. My mom, grandma, and I were having dinner and just sharing memories of my dad, who passed away a few years back. My mom told me a story about how he'd sing on her voicemail. He loved music, always did, and they’d always dance in the kitchen or at parties. My dad was so proud of my mom's poetry. They had a blast dancing at my friend Alex's bar mitzvah. And my grandmother remembered the gardens he'd plant, and how he'd surprise my mom with her favorite flowers, nasturtiums, asparagus, all kinds of salad greens. My mom recalled that one year, he just wanted to make her all of her meals for two weeks, and have her read certain articles, and watch documentaries with him. As I was listening and sharing my own memories, I felt closer to them, not just my dad.

Sharing is, like, how we bond. It helps us feel less alone, make sense of things. We're also deciding how we want to present ourselves, what we think other people will think. And, these decisions, they contribute to, like, broader cultural norms. Sharing shapes what people think is true, what their preferences are, even how political movements unfold.

Now, okay, sometimes those same reasons for sharing, like feeling connected, being part of a group, wanting status, they can lead to not-so-great stuff online. That desire to connect? It can be used to keep us scrolling, clicking, and engaged. Our preferences, behaviors, even our brains, can get changed. It can lead to extremism, bullying, scams, just, a mess of hate and outrage, you know, which can, like, fuel real-world violence. And political actors, marketers, trolls, they can sway our opinions in ways that hurt democracy. Diving deep into that stuff is a whole other can of worms, but it's important to remember that there are downsides.

We gotta understand what makes people want to share in the first place, so we can benefit from connecting with others and also be aware of how this can be exploited. Like, it all comes back to a value calculation, you know? What's in it for me? What's in it for them?

So, I got interested in why people share certain ideas back when I was a grad student in LA. I was studying health campaigns, but everyone around me was working in entertainment. The billboards, you know, for the newest movies and TV shows. My friends were assistants to producers, set designers, editors. They'd tell me stories at game nights about crazy bosses, or about reading "spec scripts" from the "slush pile." They decided what film ideas made it to their bosses and that influences popular culture.

I wanted to design better health campaigns. My advisor and I thought that campaigns would be more powerful if the people they convinced also convinced their friends. And, of course, people don't share *every* new idea. So, we wanted to know why people share *some* things, but not others. And what happens in the brain when they decide? So, I thought about my friends going through the slush pile, and, voila, a study was born.

We had undergrads at UCLA pretend they were interns evaluating TV show pitches. We came up with, like, two dozen ideas. One was about two friends rising in the mafia. Another was a college comedy about a sports team that nobody paid attention to, you know. I mean, we probably wouldn’t win Emmys with these ideas, but looking back, I feel like we weren’t far off!

So, we monitored their brain activity as they decided which ideas to pitch to their boss. After seeing each slide, they rated how likely they'd be to pass the ideas on.

Then, we had them record videos pitching the shows they thought were good and critiquing the ones that would flop. Some people *really* got into it, imagining themselves watching the shows. Then, we showed those videos to a second group, the "producers," who rated their intentions to pass on the information. It let us see what was happening in the brain when the interns initially decided what to share and then see if *that* brain activity tracked which ideas spread.

Okay, so, not surprisingly, we found that activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex, which are regions involved in self-relevance, social-relevance, and value processes, correlated with how likely they were to recommend it. And those regions in the "interns" also predicted how likely the "producers" were to choose to recommend the ideas later as well.

What does this tell us? Self-relevance could be, "Is this relevant to me?" Social relevance could be, "Is this relevant to the people I’m thinking of sharing with?" And at the intersection? "What will it say about *me* if I share it?"

I think it speaks to deeper human needs: feeling good about ourselves, connecting with others, and maintaining social status. Those small, daily choices to share tap into deeper needs.

Speaking of needs, Eric, after sending Laura that virtual rose, he wanted to, like, "lock it down." It was the height of the pandemic, so he planned a perfect *virtual* date. He remembered the decks of cards I had left at his house.

He and a friend had helped me prepare a workshop for business leaders. I shared research about what happens in the brain when people share information about themselves. I had them work with this deck of cards, each with a question printed on one side. It was "Fast Friends." Eric flipped through the cards with Laura in mind.

“He started with the easy questions,” Laura told me. But then they got to the deeper questions in the third deck. There was a question, something like, ‘If you die tonight, what is something you’d be sad you hadn’t said?’ I thought, ‘I think I’m going to fall in love with this person,’ but I didn’t say that at the time." Eric's plan worked, and they met up in person.

It isn't just dating couples who want to share things about themselves. I remember when my kid, Theo, asked me, "How was your day?" I told him about walking past the magnolia trees, a meeting with a student, and a Zoom talk I gave.

He listened, and then announced, "We have a kindness bingo chart in our classroom. Asking 'How are you?' gets you a square."

I laughed. But then, it did feel good to tell him about my day. He seemed curious. It reminded me of bedtime stories my parents told me about their childhood, like my dad eating hot dogs by a stream, or my mom considering throwing banana slices out the window. They liked sharing those stories too.

Whether it's with friends, dates, or at work, you've probably shared stories about yourself a *ton*. Humans talk about themselves. A lot. Why?

Princeton psychologist Diana Tamir found that people find it rewarding to share information about themselves. Volunteers showed greater activity in the brain's value system when disclosing information about themselves, and they were willing to forgo money by choosing to share information about themselves. Sharing about ourselves is its own reward.

It might seem selfish, but there are good reasons. Sharing our preferences helps us coordinate better with others. If I like the pointy bite of the pizza and you like the crust, we should discuss that. And, sharing strengthens our bonds. It's hard to feel close to someone you know nothing about. Sharing personal information makes us feel closer to the person we’re sharing with, and people tend to like others who disclose personal information to them.

This is part of why "Fast Friends" works so well, but this personal information doesn't have to be strictly “personal.” Sharing ideas, news, memes, and other information that might not be directly about us is another way we tell people who we are and what we care about. Like, my dad once emailed me and other friends and family to explain why he had gone on a ten-day meditation retreat and including some YouTube videos about meditation. Or Eric forwarding me Laura’s voicemail about tomatoes. Or me sharing my music playlist with my friends.

Understanding sharing as self-expression helps us understand why people amplify certain kinds of messages online. My team investigated how we might encourage people to share high-quality news articles or social media posts that promote healthy lifestyles, discuss climate change, or call for people to vote. We reasoned, we could potentially shift norms and make it easier for people to make healthy choices for themselves and for their communities.

We had people write brief posts about why messages were relevant to them, or just describe what the message was about. Then they rated how relevant the message was to them and to others and whether they’d be willing to post it online.

When people told us that the news articles and social media posts initially felt personally relevant to them, they were also more likely to want to share the information with others. That simple act, connecting the information with their self-concepts and personal experience, made them want to share the articles with others more than when they only thought about the basic content of the articles. In a series of follow-up studies, we found that the more people rated news articles as relevant to themselves, the more activation they showed in the self-relevance system, and the more likely they were to want to share the articles online.

If there’s an idea you’re hoping others will want to talk about and share, inviting people to share why they care about an idea or cause, can increase their motivation to share.

Sharing is a social activity, so social relevance is another key factor. At the intersection, we wonder, "What will my choice to share say about me?" "What will others' reactions be?" "How will it affect our relationships?"

I remember meeting Ruth Katz, the wife of my late colleague. She told me that one key to a good marriage is making your partner your "primary audience." Working with each other enriched both their careers and their lives.

Luckily for me, my partner, Brett, is a stellar "primary audience" when I want to talk about the brain or about things that are puzzling me at work. And when Brett wants to talk through his cryptography work I listen. Those seemingly mundane items Brett shares in our life together are overtures and opportunities to connect.

Brett recently texted me a link to an article about Gen Z email sign-offs. One employee closes her emails with “Seeyas later,” while another uses “F*ck you, I’m out.” I figured Brett shared the article with me to highlight our shared experience of aging out of knowing what is cool. Turns out, reading those silly email sign-offs made Gen Z feel less threatening to him. He felt judged for his workaholic tendencies. But those email sign-offs made him feel like his younger colleagues were simply having fun at their jobs, telling it like it is. In turn, I shared that I love the ways that younger folks in my lab have pushed for more work-life balance; I think it is an important element to making the academy more equitable, and it makes me feel freer to relax too.

Over the course of our relationship, I’ve become more aware of the ways that Brett uses article sharing to try to connect with me. He appreciates when I read the full articles he shares and sometimes feels slighted when I admit that I haven’t gotten the chance to open one yet. The articles are chances to connect with each other, to strengthen our bond and learn even more about each other.

We invited college student volunteers to play a game called Cyberball. Cyberball is a computer game of catch between three players. The volunteers in our study believed they were playing with two other volunteers, but in reality the other players were controlled by a computer. These “players” were preprogrammed to play either a “fair” game of catch, where they throw the ball to everyone, including the human participant, equally; or an “unfair” game, in which they throw it to the participant a few times, but soon only throw to each other, leaving the real player out. This might not sound like that big of a deal, but people end up feeling left out, and it doesn’t feel great. We were thus able to simulate feelings of being included or excluded.

After they were finished playing the game, we asked the volunteers to help us with a task they thought was completely unrelated, beta testing a new news-sharing app. We found that after they had been excluded in Cyberball, they significantly increased the amount they shared specifically with close friends. In the face of a social threat, our volunteers sought to share, perhaps as a way of connecting with their friends, reinforcing their bonds, and feeling better.

It's natural that regions of the brain that help us understand what others might think and feel also often track people's interest in sharing ideas. Laura recently shared a podcast episode with me about parenting, for instance. The podcast discussed how we can parent in a way that gives kids respect, even when we don’t always get it in return. I found the episode thoughtful and funny, and I thought it was entertaining and felt it was relevant enough to my parenting experiences to share with others as well. I decided to share the podcast with Anna and Ashley, who both have kids the same age as my twins. I didn’t share it with Emma, who is kid-free and who I therefore guessed wouldn’t find it as interesting.

We all make such calculations when deciding whether to share something, and with whom. Will Anna like this? Will the show make her laugh? What will it make her think about me and about our relationship? We can see this process play out in the brain in the activation of the social relevance system when people are making sharing decisions. Interventions to change people’s perceptions of a message’s social relevance also increase activation in the brain’s social relevance system and increase people’s motivation to share.

Thinking about social relevance can also include wanting to gain status, look cool or smart or capable, or persuade others. We found that just as simple prompts that invite people to include content about themselves can encourage sharing, so can similar invitations to customize content for their network. This could entail highlighting anything from ways the content might make others feel to what their friends stand to gain from the information.

But what if you have the option of sharing anonymously? Researchers showed students news stories while their brains were scanned. Some of the stories reported on moral acts, and some reported on immoral acts. The students had the opportunity to share these stories with others, and for half of the news stories, the students were told that the story would be posted anonymously, but for the other half, they were told the story would be posted along with their real name.

The researchers found that, overall, the students shared the moral headlines more than the immoral ones. This was particularly true when they posted using their real name, and was also reflected in the activation of their social relevance systems. Then, the team used a noninvasive brain stimulation technique to change activation of the social relevance system and people responded to this activation accordingly. When brain stimulation dampened activation within a key part of the social relevance system, people showed less concern about posting immoral stories with their real name.

When people think many others share their opinion, it also changes the way they use their social relevance system. People are more willing to share information about products when they believe that others would also recommend the same thing. People generally prefer to share ideas that are already somewhat popular.

This tendency can backfire when our beliefs about what is popular are mistaken. Research on pressing societal issues such as climate change has shown that people often incorrectly believe that although they themselves care about global warming, others do not. This phenomenon, which scholars call pluralistic ignorance, makes people less willing to speak up and share their views on topics like climate-related policy because they underestimate how much others will agree with or value their opinion.

Highlighting the number of people who have already shared or taken specific actions, such as adopting pro-environmental behaviors, can sometimes increase our motivation to do the same. Helping people feel part of a bigger whole can also make them not only more likely to take action personally but also to share with others and build even more momentum. Seeing yourself as part of a growing social group that cares about the environment, for example, is associated with higher pro-environmental intentions and behaviors.

I wondered what makes some ideas likely to be shared by bigger groups of people, while others fall flat. I also wondered if it was possible to scale up the findings from the TV show study I had run as a graduate student and if there were commonalities in the brains of diverse audiences that made some content more appealing to share, not just in the lab environment but in real life. Would the same principles work when ideas travel from person to person in the real world?

I had been thinking about investigating what makes people share through the lens of mobile game apps, but we decided that we look at what happens in people’s brains when they read health news headlines. News often changes how we think about the world around us, and there are entire sections of the newspaper devoted to people’s health.

Our team explored whether it would be possible to forecast the sharing of health news articles around the world based on the brain responses they elicited from only a small number of people. We scanned the participants’ brains while they read article headlines and rated how likely they would be to share them. We used real articles that had been shared to differing degrees. To see if the people whose brains we had scanned picked up on the differences between the articles that had been shared a lot versus those that had not, we averaged data from their brain responses to arrive at a number for each article, representing how strongly the volunteers’ value, self-relevance, and social relevance systems had responded to the headline. Finally, we compared these results with the statistics for how often those articles were downloaded and shared via email and social media among the global population.

Remarkably, we found that brain responses from these two small groups helped us predict which stories were most likely to be shared across the world. Despite the seemingly large differences and variability in what people care about, people’s brains seemed to converge on what would be popular.

Follow-up analyses of the same data showed that within these small groups, some people’s brains were more predictive of wider large-scale sharing than others’. The brains of people who infrequently read the news were more discriminating. When we saw greater activation in their value systems, that typically meant that the article was more likely to be shared widely around the world.

For something to be widely adopted, it needs to be liked not only by the committed people who are already disposed to love it but also by those who are less involved in that domain.

We can see how corporations have tapped into this to expand the market for their products. Consider the way Apple revolutionized consumer electronics by coming up with user-friendly interfaces and capturing the imaginations of not only tech enthusiasts but also broader audiences, or the way that Fitbit popularized step counting and brought focus on activity for people who weren’t athletes. In considering how to address big societal problems like climate change, we would therefore do well to design products and technologies that are practical and cost-effective for people who aren’t particularly eco-conscious and who might prioritize other factors in their decision-making.

We have run several more studies to explore how widely the value calculations of one group might represent others. I wondered if our prior research findings translate to another culture.

We scanned people's brains while they read article headlines and asked them to rate how inclined they were to read the article themselves, and then looked at whether the brain activity we recorded and self-reported ratings predicted how much each article had really been shared.

We found that the collective brain activity of our relatively small group of volunteers was still a bellwether for how widely articles about health and climate change were shared on a much larger scale, among thousands of people. But when we compared how well the brain signals and self-reported ratings of both groups predicted virality, things got really interesting. Although the one group’s ratings tracked with how widely the articles were shared online, the other participants’ ratings did not. But the second group participants’ brain signals did correspond with how widely the articles were shared worldwide.

This suggests something intriguing about the underlying nature of what we value and how we decide to share. Even though people showed differences in what they told us they wanted to read, the responses we recorded in their value systems were more similar.

Even though Dutch and American people showed differences in what they told us they wanted to read, the responses we recorded in their value systems were more similar.

I'm excited to run more studies to find out if the brain responses are tapping into more fundamental needs that we all have regardless of our conscious thoughts about the content we’re sharing (like the prospect of bonding or looking good) or if there are other sources of value that are shared more universally across these two cultures when people decide to share. I find this possibility intriguing, that perhaps the ideas that tap into activating our underlying self, social, and value systems are more similar than what we present on the surface.

Understanding how self- and social relevance motivate people to share information with others might help guide us in offering people our full attention. Understanding these motives can also help us make sense of our urges to turn to our phones or social media, even when we might otherwise want to be present in the moment.

When Eric proposed to Laura, I was the first person in our family to find out. I got my phone camera ready. And after the initial excitement settled down, at the Thanksgiving table, despite our family’s "no phones at the table" rule, I couldn’t help texting photos to all my friends as well.

The kind of connection we seek through reaching out to others and sharing also comes to the fore during the hardest times we face. My dear friend Emile was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Less than two weeks after the diagnosis, Emile gathered his closest collaborators for a chance to share. He said he wanted to focus the meeting on his vision: promoting peace, reducing dehumanization, taking on increasing political polarization. He had made a slide presentation. The people he’d gathered were, on one level, grieving. He understood that kind of grief and the value of being able to share it communally. He went on to talk about what he hoped we would carry forward from his legacy. He said, “Our goal should be more dramatic than just doing good science, although that’s important and wonderful and good,” he emphasized. “We have the potential to do more. We have the potential to walk through darkness and spread light.”

To realize this potential, at this meeting, and in the months that followed, Emile made sure that we were connected not only to the ideas but to each other. Toward the end of the meeting in his living room, through tears, he explained how we might access the greater potential he envisioned to spread light. “The nice thing is that this force is in us and communal. It’s not owned. And the best way to activate a communal force is to be a community. So that’s why we’re here.”

When a choice is about connection, it resonates on a different level. But Emile did something he had been doing his whole life, and that was part of what made his ideas so infectious: he brought us together, shared with us not just information but his connection to it, and impressed upon us that these ideas were how his work would live on. He made it about us, and helped us build the bridges to one another, so we could call on each other, in his absence, to advance the work and his broader goals.

We have the power to influence those around us with what, and how, we share and in the opportunities we provide for others to share with us. As we’ll explore next, in doing so, we have the chance to illuminate new pathways of action that shape the culture we are part of.