Is Happiness Shared Doubled and Sadness Shared Halved? Social Influence on Enjoyment of Hedonic Experiences

Because many hedonic stimuli (e.g., movies, vacations, food) are often consumed in the company of other people, it is important to know how social influence affects the enjoyment of shared experiences. Extrapolation from informational and normative influences suggests that enjoyment is enhanced when others offer positive opinions and diminished when they offer negative opinions about shared stimuli. In this article, the authors propose an alternative model. Building on the need to belong and the need for accuracy, the authors predict that enjoyment from sharing stimuli depends on consumers' perceived interpersonal agreements about the shared stimuli, such that congruence of opinions enhances and incongruence of opinions diminishes the enjoyment of the shared experience. The results from three experiments support the authors' predictions and indicate that under some circumstances, social influence can operate in opposite directions on judgments of shared stimuli and on the enjoyment of sharing them.