This research explores the possibility that exaggerating in order to entertain the listener while sharing previous experiences can increase interpersonal closeness in new relationships. It is hypothesized that adding exaggerations about previous experiences will increase the quality of the story, which will lead to increased interpersonal closeness, and that even listeners who are provided with the actual facts will show this effect. Three studies with 592 total participants investigated the impact of exaggerating when sharing a story about a previous experience on feelings of closeness to the storyteller. In Study 1, participants read scenarios of a person telling a story about a previous experience. Results indicate a preference for exaggerated stories and a concomitant feeling of closeness to the storyteller. In Study 2, participants retold the events of a video to another participant who was a stranger. Participants instructed to give an entertaining recalling used more exaggerations, and listeners felt closer to them. In Study 3, participants watched a video of a confederate retelling events accurately or with clear exaggerations. Participants reported feeling closer to the confederate when exaggerations were included, even when they knew the facts the storyteller was retelling. Discussion centers on reasons why being entertaining was more beneficial in creating relationship closeness than being honest.
AamodtM. G.CusterH. (2006). Who can best catch a liar? A meta-analysis of individual differences in detecting deception. The Forensic Examiner, 15, 6–11.
2.
AronA.AronE. N.SmollanD. (1992). Inclusion of other in the self scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 596–612. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.63.4.596
3.
BackbierEHoogstratenJ.Meerum Terwogt-KouwenhovenK. (1997). Situational determinants of the acceptability of telling lies. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27, 1048–1062. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1997.tb00286.x
4.
BaronJ. M.BluckS. (2011). That was a good story! Preliminary construction of the perceived story quality index. Discourse Processes: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 48, 93–118. doi:10.1080/01638531003702109
5.
BeikeD.BrandonN.ColeH. (2016). Is sharing autobiographical memories a distinct form of self-disclosure?Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 434–450. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000143
6.
BerscheidE.SnyderM.OmotoA. M. (1989). The relationship closeness inventory: Assessing the closeness of interpersonal relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 792–807. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.57.5.792
7.
BochnerA. P.EllisC.Tillman-HealyL. M. (1997). Relationships as stories. In DuckS. (Ed.), Handbook of personal relationships: Theory, research, and interventions (2nd ed., pp. 307–324). New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
8.
BrunerJ. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
9.
BrunerJ. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
10.
BrunerJ. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18, 1–21.
11.
BuehlmanK. T.GottmanJ. M.KatzL. F. (1992). How a couple views their past predicts their future: Predicting divorce from an oral history interview. Journal of Family Psychology, 5, 295–318.
12.
BusseyK. (1999). Children’s categorization and evaluation of different types of lies and truths. Child Development, 70, 1338–1347. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00098
13.
CialdiniR. B.BrownS. L.LewisB. P.LuceC.NeubergS. L. (1997). Reinterpreting the empathy–altruism relationship: When one into one equals oneness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 481–494. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.73.3.481
14.
CohenB.JinksD.ZanuckR.BurtonT. (2003). Big Fish. Waxhaw, NC: Paramount Pictures.
15.
CollinsN. L.MillerL. C. (1994). Self-disclosure and liking: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 457. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.11.3.457
16.
DePauloB. M.AnsfieldM. E.KirkendolS. E.BodenJ. M. (2004). Serious lies. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 26, 147–167. doi:10.1080/01973533.2004.9646402
17.
DePauloB. M.KashyD. A.KirkendolS. E.WyerM. M.EpsteinJ. A. (1996). Lying in everyday life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 979–995. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.70.5.979
18.
DonahueJ. K.GreenM. C. (2016). A good story: Men’s storytelling ability affects their attractiveness and perceived status. Personal Relationships, 23, 199–213. doi:10.1111/pere.12120
19.
DudukovicN. M.MarshE. J.TverskyB. (2004). Telling a story or telling it straight: The effects of entertaining versus accurate retellings on memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18, 125–143. doi:10.1002/acp.953
20.
FisherW. R. (1987). Human communication as narration: Toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
21.
GreenM. C.BrockT. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 701–721. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701
22.
GreenM. C.BrockT. C.KaufmanG. F. (2004). Understanding media enjoyment: The role of transportation into narrative worlds. Communication Theory, 14, 311–327. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2004.tb00317.x
23.
GreenM. C.DonahueJ. K. (2011). Persistence of belief change in the face of deception: The effect of factual stories revealed to be false. Media Psychology, 14, 312. doi:10.1080/15213269.2011.598050
24.
Harmon-JonesE.AllenJ. J. (2001). The role of affect in the mere exposure effect: Evidence from psychophysiological and individual differences approaches. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 889–898. doi:10.1177/0146167201277011
25.
HayesA. F.PreacherK. J.MyersT. A. (2011). Mediation and the estimation of indirect effects in political communication research. Sourcebook for political communication research: Methods, measures, and analytical techniques, 23, 434–465.
26.
HolmbergD.OrbuchT. L.VeroffJ. (2004). Thrice told tales: Married couples tell their stories. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. doi:10.4324/9781410609359
27.
Koenig KellasJ. (2005). Family ties: Communicating identity through jointly told stories. Communication Monographs, 72, 365–389. doi:10.1080/03637750500322453
28.
Koenig KellasJ. (2015). Narrative theories: Making sense of interpersonal communication. In BraithwaiteD. O.SchrodtP. (Eds.), Engaging theories in interpersonal communication (pp. 253–266). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. doi:10.4135/9781483329529
29.
Koenig KellasJ.TreesA. R.SchrodtP.LeClair-UnderbergC.WillerE. (2010). Exploring links between well-being and interactional sense-making in married couples’ jointly told stories of stress. Journal of Family Communication, 10, 174–193. doi:10.1080/15267431.2010.489217
30.
Koenig KellasJ.WillerE.KranstuberH. (2010). Fairytales and tragedies: Narratively making sense of (and the dark side of making sense) of personal relationships. In SpitzbergB. H.CupachW. R. (Eds.), The dark side of close relationships (2nd ed., pp. 63–93). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. doi:10.4324/9780203874370
31.
KrugerJ.WirtzD.Van BovenL.AltermattT. W. (2004). The effort heuristic. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 91–98. doi:10.1016/S0022-1031(03)00065-9
32.
KuhnK. M.JohnsonT. R.MillerD. (2013). Applicant desirability influences reactions to discovered résumé embellishments. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 21, 111–120. doi:10.1111/ijsa.12021
33.
LabovW.WaletzkyJ. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In HelmsJ. (Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts: Proceedings of the 1966 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society (pp. 12–44). Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
34.
LevineT. R. (2014). Truth-Default Theory (TDT): a theory of human deception and deception detection. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 33, 378–392. doi:10.1177/0261927X14535916
35.
MarshE. J. (2007). Retelling is not the same as recalling: Implications for memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 16–20. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00467.x
36.
MarshE.TverskyB. (2004). Spinning the stories of our lives. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18, 491–503. doi:10.1002/acp.1001
37.
McAdamsD. P. (2013). The psychological self as actor, agent, and author. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 272–295. doi:10.1177/1745691612464657
38.
McAdamsD. P.McLeanK. C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 233–238. doi:10.1177/0963721413475622
39.
McLeanK. C. (2005). Late adolescent identity development: Narrative meaning making and memory telling. Developmental Psychology, 41, 683–691. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.41.4.683
40.
McLeanK. C.ThorneA. (2006). Identity light: Entertainment stories as a vehicle for self-development. In McAdamsD. P.JosselsonR.LieblichA.McAdamsD. P.JosselsonR.LieblichA. (Eds.), Identity and story: Creating self in narrative (pp. 111–127). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. doi:10.1037/11414-005
41.
NorrickN. (2007). Conversational storytelling. In HermanD. (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (Cambridge Companions to Literature, pp. 127–141). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521856965.009
42.
PasupathiM. (2006). Silk from sows’ ears: Collaborative construction of everyday selves in everyday stories. In McAdamsD. P.JosselsonR.LieblichA.McAdamsD. P.JosselsonR.LieblichA. (Eds.), Identity and story: Creating self in narrative (pp. 129–150). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. doi:10.1037/11414-006
43.
PontariB. A.SchlenkerB. R. (2006). Helping friends manage impressions: We like helpful liars but respect nonhelpful truth tellers. Basic & Applied Social Psychology, 28. doi:10.1207/s15324834basp2802_7
44.
PreacherK. J.HayesA. F. (2004). SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 36, 717–731. doi:10.3758/BF03206553
45.
ReberR.WinkielmanP.SchwarzN. (1998). Effects of perceptual fluency on affective judgments. Psychological Science, 9, 45–48. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00008
46.
RycynaC. C.ChampionC. D.KellyA. E. (2009). First impressions after various types of deception: Less favorable following expectancy violation. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 31, 40–48. doi:10.1080/01973530802659851
47.
SchumannK. (2012). Does love mean never having to say you’re sorry? Associations between relationship satisfaction, perceived apology sincerity, and forgiveness. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 29, 997–1010. doi:10.1177/0265407512448277
SpenceD. (1982). Narrative truth and historical truth: Meaning and interpretation in psychoanalysis. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
50.
TjosvoldD.JohnsonD. W.JohnsonR. T. (1981). Effect of partner’s effort and ability on liking for partner after failure on a cooperative task. The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 109, 147–152. doi:10.1080/00223980.1981.9915299
51.
TylerJ. M.FeldmanR. S.ReichertA. (2006). The price of deceptive behavior: Disliking and lying to people who lie to us. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 69–77. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2005.02.003
52.
UlatowskaH. K.OlnessG. S.SamsonA. M.KeeblerM. W.GoinsK. E. (2004). On the nature of personal narratives of high quality. Advances in Speech Language Pathology, 6, 3–14. doi:10.1080/14417040410001669453
53.
VeroffJ.SutherlandL.ChadihaL.OrtegaR. M. (1993). Newlyweds tell their stories: A narrative method for assessing marital experiences. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 10, 437–457. doi:10.1177/0265407593103010
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
