Boasting on Facebook feels as good as sex

Bragging about yourself on Facebook really does make you feel better, tests have revealed. A study found that it triggered the same sensation of pleasure as food, money or even sex. Participants in the research were so keen to brag about their achievements that they would rather give up money than their chance to carry on doing so, the Daily Mail reported. According to Harvard University neuroscientists, the findings applied to boasting not only in person but also on online social networks such as Facebook. The US team used an MRI scanner to monitor brain activity in subjects who were asked to talk first about their own beliefs and thoughts, then those of others. The results showed that whenever participants talked about themselves there was increased activity in the mesolimbic dopamine system, the area of the brain linked to the feeling of reward in sex, winning money or enjoying a good meal. In a separate test the Harvard team offered the test subjects small amounts of money if they answered questions about somebody other than themselves, such as US President Barack Obama. But they regularly opted to relinquish between 17 per cent and 25 per cent of their potential earnings just to gush about their own lives. "Self-disclosure is extra rewarding," Harvard neuroscientist Diana Tamir, who conducted the experiments with her colleague Jason Mitchell, said. "People were even willing to forgo money in order to talk about themselves. "This helps to explain why people so obsessively engage in this behaviour. It's because it provides them with some sort of subjective value: It feels good, basically," Tamir said. Brain scans also confirmed that when they chose to talk about themselves, the mesolimbic dopamine system in the brain became active-the same area that responds to reward and satisfaction from food, money or sex. "We joked that this was the penny for your thoughts study," Tamir said.