If you've spent any time on Twitter, then you're probably familiar with the "humblebrag"—a brag veiled in a complaint, so as to sound less blatantly like a brag.
Here's an example from the Twitter account of Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary: They just announced my flight at LaGuardia is number 15 for takeoff. I miss Air Force One!! And here's one from film director Lee Unkrich: Just in case you think all this has gone to my head, within 36 hours of winning the Oscar, I was back home plunging a clogged toilet.
“Not only do we like humblebraggers less, we're less likely to be generous to them”
Humblebragging runs rampant on Twitter, but it turns out to be a lousy self-promotion tactic, especially in business situations such as job interviews, according to recent research by Harvard Business School's Ovul Sezer, Francesca Gino, and Michael I. Norton.
Their research shows that when given the choice to brag or to humblebrag, it's better to straight-out brag.
"When people first join Twitter, one of the first things they notice is that a lot of people humblebrag," says Francesca Gino, a professor in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets unit at HBS. "We were interested in discovering if this was an effective strategy, since a lot of people seemed to be doing it. Our assumption was that … they think there's an advantage to doing it, given that it's such a common practice. And we found that it's an ineffective strategy."
The researchers hypothesized that humblebragging garners negative impressions because the strategy seems insincere, compared with pure bragging or pure complaining. They tested the hypothesis in a series of five studies, detailed in the paper Humblebragging: A Distinct—and Ineffective—Self-Presentation Strategy.
About That 'biggest Weakness' Interview Question…
In the first study, the researchers created a dataset of 740 items from the Twitter feed @Humblebrag. The brainchild of the late comedy writer Harris Wittels, the page lists real tweets categorized as humblebrags between June 2011 and March 2013. Examples include I just realized muscles & golf don't mesh (from former professional linebacker Shawne Merriman) and Remind me not to stay out til 2am w/@kidrock again. Hurtin' for certain today (from cyclist Lance Armstrong).

Two independent raters evaluated each item, based on both the likability and the sincerity of the tweets, and the extent to which they perceived each statement as a humblebrag. The identities of the tweeters were concealed, so the raters weren't swayed by celebrity. The results showed that humblebragging was negatively correlated with liking: The more raters viewed a tweet as a humblebrag, the less they liked the tweeter. Humblebrags also received high insincerity ratings, suggesting that disingenuousness is a key reason that people don't like humblebrags, just as the researchers had hypothesized.
The takeaway: Humblebragging is annoying. "It's as if you're trying to say something good about yourself, but then you cover it up with something else," Gino says. "And people don't like that."
The second study looked at humblebragging in the context of job interviews. The research team wanted to gauge how often people humblebrag when faced with the common interview question, "What's your biggest weakness?" Indeed, interviewees are often counseled to put a positive spin on the answer: "I'm overly eager to please my customers," for instance, or "It's hard for me to work on teams because I'm such a perfectionist."
The researchers hired 122 college students to explain how they would answer the interview question, and why they would answer that way. Two independent coders evaluated the responses according to the extent to which they humblebragged, and whether the answers were honest or strategic. Separately, two research assistants rated each response based on whether the respondent seemed like an attractive job candidate.
Results showed that 77 percent of participants had chosen to humblebrag rather than disclose an obvious weakness—the most common answers focused on perfectionism (32.8 percent), working too hard (24.6 percent), and niceness to a fault (14.8 percent).
Of those respondents who did humblebrag, some 66 percent said they did so strategically. But it turned out to be a bad strategy. Overall, the research assistants were much more interested in hiring the honest answerers than the humblebraggers.
The takeaway: Don't humblebrag in a job interview.
Deconstructing The Humblebrag
The next set of studies measured the efficacy of pure complaining and pure bragging against humblebragging.
"If you look at the structure of a humblebrag, there's a part where you're trying to promote yourself, and then there's also a complaint," Gino says. "And so we separated them out to try to understand which one would win—in terms of being liked and having people be willing to help you out."
The researchers asked 201 participants to evaluate the likability and sincerity of a hypothetical person based on a single statement. Participants were randomly assigned to rate one of three statements: "I am so bored of people mistaking me for a model" (a humblebrag), "People mistake me for a model" (a brag), and "I am so bored" (a complaint). The results showed that the complaint received the highest likability scores, while the humblebrag received the lowest. Complaints scored the highest ratings for perceived sincerity, while humblebrags scored the lowest.
Next, the researchers dug into whether humblebragging offers any compensatory benefits, in spite of the perceived insincerity and bad feelings it engenders.
As with the previous study, the team hired 201 participants to evaluate another person based on a single statement. Half read a blatant brag ("I get hit on all the time"), while the other half read a humblebrag ("Just rolled out of bed and still get hit on all the time, so annoying). This time, participants rated the targets not only on likability and sincerity, but also on how attractive they thought the person was.
And as with the previous study, participants saw humblebraggers as less likable and more insincere than blatant braggers. But more importantly, they viewed humblebraggers as less attractive than the braggers.
The takeaway: By public perception, complainers are better than braggers. And humblebraggers are the worst.
By this point in the research, it was clear that humblebragging engenders disdain. But would negative feelings lead to negative actions?
In the final study, the researchers investigated whether people treat humblebraggers worse than they treat braggers. "We predicted that people would allocate less money to humblebraggers than to braggers when given $5 to split in a dictator game," they explain in the paper. (A common tool in experimental economics, the dictator game has one player determining how to split an endowment between himself and another player.)
The prediction bore out. In a series of experiments involving 154 participants, those paired with braggers allocated more money than those paired with humblebraggers.
The takeaway: Seriously, stop humblebragging! "Not only do we like humblebraggers less that braggers, but we're less likely to be generous to them," Gino says.
Next Steps And Lessons Learned
Gino says her team plans to continue its research on humblebragging, homing in on the motivations behind it—that is, why people keep doing it even though it only seems to breed contempt. "One of the things we want to examine in future research is to look at whether having more experience or power leads to more or less humblebragging," she says. "For instance, we started looking at accounts on Twitter of people who are executives or CEOs. This will help us understand how much they humblebrag. We're also going to look at people who recently got promoted to a new job with more power, and see if there's a change in their humblebragging behavior."
In the meantime, Gino is applying some of the lessons learned from the initial research—namely, admitting fallibility rather than couching it.
"I think people have a tendency not to say something negative about themselves because that makes them vulnerable," she says.
Since beginning the humblebrag research, Gino has realized the value of public vulnerability. For instance, when teaching a Negotiation class to first-year MBA students, she shares the story of the time she flubbed an important negotiation situation in her own life. "I tell them about how my postdoc advisor made me an offer, and I accepted it immediately, without letting him talk about it a bit longer, which is clearly not how you should approach a negotiation situation. In fact, he ended up telling me he could improve the offer if I [had] only asked!" she says. "I think the students appreciate hearing the story—we can all learn from our own mistakes (and those of others!)."
That said, Gino recently humblebragged on Twitter about the humblebragging research: "So exhausting to keep up with all the people asking for this paper."
"That was a joke," she explains. "But people likely disliked the statement anyway."
One suggestion: Pls. edit the article and add a few takeaway solutions, some real next steps on what to do when the humblebrag instinct rears its ugly head. Yes, you gave good advice to share a story where we flubbed up. Of course. Yet in your opinion, what is the best way for corp. storytellers and public speakers to share experience/wins without sounding like a braggart or a humblebraggart?
One solution is to embed the "win" in a A) LONGER anecdote that B) shows both a vulnerable flub AND a win. Love to hear more ideas.
I wonder whether our use of filler words such as, "kinda" or "sorta", attempt this same false humility. If someone interjects "sorta" in the middle of a declaration, do they mean what they are saying or not? Does it mean they intend a weaker impact than what the statement would have without the "dilution"? Or, perhaps they intend the full impact, but assume that by saying "sorta", we are descending to a tacit humility protocol.
The comparison between humblebragging (being indirect with one's intention) versus true complaints and brags (direct intentions) in this report seem to favor the latter.
Let's remove diluting words, and indirect intention, in order to communicate clearly what we mean.
Essentially, someone is saying to someone else whom they know they will be judged by "please like me, here's why!"
Things are different when you are in a (positive) relationship with people already. When a stranger pops up and says something great about themself, it's much more likely to be interpreted as bragging than when someone you know says something great, whether the person is a spouse or a shareholder. Then gushing about the promotion you got or about the quarterly increase in shareholder profits isn't bragging, it's information that is valuable to the person receiving it.
So Marianne's question about the "best way for corp. storytellers and public speakers to share experience/wins without sounding like a braggart or a humblebraggart" is that it depends on the audience. If they're positively invested in you, you aren't bragging. And your humblebrag is probably going to sound closer to snatching victory from near defeat, or a moment of a jointly recognized absence of something positive. At least for good friends and happy spouses. Shareholders might not be thrilled at the reminder that things used to be better.
It is just going to be extremely hard to say anything distinctively positive about yourself or your organization to strangers who have no knowledge already, or who have knowledge but have a negative perception and aren't looking to be persuaded. You need to have someone who is at least looking for a reason to like you. Otherwise it's going to be a tough sale.
And tough sale often means repetition. No one would think that drinking soda was a particularly good idea if we weren't told multiple times every day just how great soda is. Soda is certainly bragging, constantly bragging. Eventually you'll believe it, if you can't escape it. But if you spend some time in Europe, you'll find that your devotion to soda weakens. However, you will start to crave carbonated bottled water.
But there is a second issue at play. In many cases, the brag and the humble brag are more specific than the complaint, and this may affect the ratings. Take the example where the complaints were rated highest:
"I am so bored of people mistaking me for a model." (a humblebrag)
"People mistake me for a model." (a brag)
"I am so bored." (a complaint)
The humblebrag and the brag are both extraordinary statements compared to the complaint. Being mistaken for a model is highly positive, being bored is an everyday occurrence. What would happen if the complaint was "being in jail for armed robbery sucks"? There are probably more people in jail, or who have been in jail, for armed robbery that there are models or people who have been models or genuinely mistaken for models. But I don't think the complainer would get as high a rating there.
Similarly, what if the "brag" was merely something positive, like "I'm feeling happy today". Is it even a brag anymore? Probably not. But I think that statements like "I'm feeling happy today" would rank higher than complaints like "being in jail for armed robbery sucks". We just don't have a special word for things that suck that you deserve. In fact, something like "that sucks but you deserve it" would probably be the response to the "jail for armed robbery sucks" complaint.
The ranking of complaint -> brag -> humblebrag may really result from the greater positive deviation from neutral of the brag (very/extraordinarily positive) and humblebrag (extraordinarily positive/so rare you should be grateful so stop whining) than the negative deviation from neutral of the complaint.
Compare the humblebrag to the comic stereotype of chutzpah: killing your parents and then asking the judge for leniency because you're an orphan. Don't compare it to being bored or a bit chilly.
This is true also in the area of applying for job and then facing the interview board. Not only can excesses mentioned in applications and CVs get revealed but the expression before the board while answering questions would also smack of such an egotist approach.
To succeed we need to remain humble and reveal what we really are. Progress can follow only if we have analysed ourselves very objectively and are conscious of what we lack so that steps could be taken regularly to improve.
An interesting study !
It's tough to express humility in job/work environments where there is always slight edge/challenge of meeting service expectations, etc. -Otherwise keeping one's mouth shut or deflecting one's own accomplishments all the time, means being a doormat.
There is nothing wrong to say: I'm stoked over getting xxxx award...if the person genuinely did the work. It's matter of giving credit to those involved.
Why one would waste his time investigating this is the bigger question.
In one of the MENA country, there is an expression used in social media to describe politicians posing while doing good things and pretending that they are not aware somebody is filming or taking pictures, although they make sure that the media is aware of their actives, or worse, they have their own media people following them around while they are doing such activities. For example, they let people take pictures of them visiting slums and meeting with homeless people, help in cleaning streets, or buying food from street vendors although they'd never do such thing in normal circumstances.
The numbers of such pictures increase in social media before the elections. People call them "take-a-pic-while-I-pretend-I-am-not-aware-pics".
There is also another angle to this: it seems that the acceptance of humblebrag pics or talk differs based on the liability and personal history of the humblebraggers. Politicians who are viewed as credible or who are generally liked by the public normally get away with such things and their humblebrag pics or talk is circulated with praise on social media, whereas politicians who are not don't get away with it and their pics or talk is circulated with some negative comments.
So an interesting question would be, how do factors such as
'credibility' and 'popularity' in addition to 'culture' affect the acceptance of humblegragging?
I liked the article very much.
Dr. N.R.U.K.Kartha dr.nruk1944@gmail.com
A. Accomplished/accomplishment
B. Seeking further accolades/positive review
C. Social pandering and/or perception
D. Lack of self-comprehension and humility.
The degree in which the aforementioned is applied: will depend upon the context of the humblebragging, and to who the intended audience is (closely associated or disassociated). The closer you are to the humbblebragger - the more what they are communicating may seem to be an inadvertent joke, or play on words. But, to the (unknowing participant) - it may come off as undercutting, and self-absorbing (i.e., a plug of ones-self without associated meaning).
Honesty, in revealing (+ or -) information in most circumstances, is usually the best policy (as we have seen where over embellishment can get you... In today's world). If the honorable mention of individual accomplishments makes sense within the communication - by all means it should be shared (a shared/rationale understanding will be formed). But, when it is used as a means to subliminally convey your superiority (for lack of a better word) and/or higher value you have placed upon yourself regarding a matter/circumstance... You are then truly walking a tight rope between honesty, and self promotion.
Simply put, there is an old saying: You can have all the book smarts in the world, but no common sense. The same could be said for an individual that masks bragging with being humble (the two are not mutually exclusive - to one another).