Why You Can't Help Sharing the Things You Love

The best things we own are the ones we give away.

Source: Simon Hurry / Unsplash

You Already Know This Feeling

You finish a book and immediately think of three people who need to read it. You hear a song and your first instinct is to send it to someone specific. You find a study on your LinkedIn timeline and forward it before you've fully processed why.

You probably don't stop to ask yourself why you do this. You just do it.

But the assumption floating underneath, the one you might reach for if pressed, is probably something like: I want them to know I found this. I want to seem like someone who finds things like this.

A study published last month in the Academy of Management Discoveries suggests that assumption is mostly wrong (Kwon & Bae, 2026).

What the Research Found

The researchers studied over 500 real instances of people expressing enthusiasm for their work to colleagues, saying "I love what I do," recommending a project, sharing something that lit them up. The prevailing assumption in prior research was that this kind of display is instrumental: People share enthusiasm to signal commitment, appear competent, advance their reputation.

The data told a different story. The dominant motive, by a clear margin, was prosocial. People weren't trying to look good. They were trying to give something: to inspire, to uplift, to connect.

That finding held even when controlling for context, relationship type, and individual personality differences.

Why We Read It Wrong

Here's the part worth sitting with: We're not just wrong about our own motives when we share things we love. We're wrong about other people's motives too.

When someone sends you an article at midnight, or quotes a line from a book they think you need, or tells you with slightly embarrassing enthusiasm that you have to watch this film, the easiest read is that they're performing something—taste or knowledge or relevance.

The research says that's usually not what's happening. What's happening is closer to an attempt to hand you something, with no guarantee you'll want it, and no obvious return if you do.

That changes how the moment reads, on both sides.

What This Points Toward

If the impulse to share is fundamentally a generous one, then receiving well matters more than we usually treat it as. The friend who passes you something they love is doing something slightly vulnerable. They're betting that what moved them will move you too. Dismissing that, or not responding at all, is more of a rejection than it might seem.

And if you've been second-guessing your own impulse to recommend things, wondering whether you're oversharing or showing off: you probably aren't. You're probably just trying to give something away.

That impulse is one of the more human things we do.

A Recommendation (Naturally)

I can't write this post without practising what it preaches: If you haven't read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks, I'd like to press it into your hands right now. It's a collection of neurological case studies that reads like a set of short stories, and it will change, permanently, how you think about the brain, identity, and what it means to be a person. I recommend it to almost everyone. I recommend it now.

If you’d like to hear me talk about this piece, I was recently a guest on The Last Show with David Cooper.

And if you have a book, a song, or a study you've been sitting on, send it to someone tonight. It might not say something about you, but it might say something to them.

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