Is humblebragging effective?

To humblebrag is to brag while trying to appear humble. A 2017 psychology paper argues that it’s ineffective. The authors find that humblebragging is less effective than straightforward bragging, as it reduces “liking, perceived competence, compliance with requests, and financial generosity”. But I’m not sure that’s true in general, at least not on the most fruitful definition of humblebragging.

When one reads about results involving high-level psychological constructs like humblebragging, it is often important to read how it was tested. So also in this case.

Here’s how perceptions of humblebragging and straightforward bragging were tested in one study (Study 2). The participant told a confederate about their summer plans. The confederate then either bragged:

That’s cool! I got my dream internship and got funding to travel to Paris

or humblebragged:

That’s cool! I got my dream internship and got funding to travel to Paris. Ugh it’s so hard to decide which one to choose.

The vignettes in Study 3a are similar. Here are examples of humblebragging:

My attempt at wearing pants so I won’t get hit on is failing miserably.

Huh. I seem to have written one of Amazon.com’s top 10 books of 2011 (so far). Unexpected.

The corresponding examples of straightforward bragging.

I am getting hit on.

I have written one of Amazon.com’s top 10 books of 2011.

The other studies are similar. What’s noteworthy about these examples is that there is nothing subtle about them. It’s both very salient that the humblebraggers are bragging, and that they’re trying to mask it in a crude and inept way. It’s therefore not very surprising that participants preferred the braggers.

In my view, humblebragging, or what can plausibly be seen as such, is often much more subtle. I also expect more subtle humblebragging to be more successful on average.

One example of subtle humblebragging could be steering a conversation in a particular direction. You might have achieved much more in a certain field than in another, and therefore subtly steer the conversation towards the former. Once you’re on the topic, a few minutes down the line, your achievements in the field come up naturally. You may not even have to mention them yourself - your interlocutor might ask about them themselves. These kinds of moves are made all the time, and they’re very hard to spot. The humblebragger themselves might not even notice that they’re doing it.

An objection might be that such subtle moves don’t really count as humblebragging. While humblebragging is somewhat indirect and subtle, the argument goes, such examples are too indirect. What we mean by humblebragging is something that can reasonably easily be identified as such by conversation partners, like in the examples above.

But a risk with that is that then we’ve almost made humblebragging an ineffective strategy by definition, since what’s perceived as humblebragging will likely tend to be disliked. And then the claim that humblebragging is ineffective isn’t very interesting.

While one can of course explore narrow definitions of humblebragging as well, a broader definition of humblebragging is in my view more fruitful and natural. It says to humblebrag is to try to convey positive information about yourself without coming off as either bragging or humblebragging. On that broader definition, more subtle moves like the one I sketched also count as humblebragging. And on that definition, humblebragging is plausibly often effective, these findings notwithstanding.

This effectiveness would explain why people humblebrag so frequently. Humblebrag is arguably a form of deception, like lying. Why do people lie? Ultimately because it at least sometimes benefits them. That’s not always the case - sometimes they’re caught out, and their lying backfires. But that’s hardly always the case. Lying plausibly wouldn’t exist if it was generally unsuccessful. We should expect the same to be true about humblebragging. People may sometimes overestimate the effectiveness of their humblebragging, mistakenly thinking others won’t be able to spot it as such (cf. Study 5). But it would be surprising if people engaged in a form of deception that always or nearly always failed.