For more details, you can find our full paper at bit.ly/3swgXJN. Pre-registration, data, and code is available at osf.io/bnmh9/.
🧵 10/10

In sum, the way you express your experiences influences the way others support you. It's not just what you say, but how you say it.
🧵 9/10

Relatedly, be mindful. Our findings shows that really negative and rambling posts — like the ones in Profile 1 — often bring about negative and not-so-helpful feedback that may encourage harmful habits and attitudes… bringing about a cycle of negativity
🧵 8/10

The next time you find yourself looking for advice and validation online, strive for clarity in your communication and avoid ambiguity. Our findings suggest that people are keen to offer informational, instrumental, and esteem support given sufficient coherence.
🧵 7/10

These differences in how people talked about their experiences influenced the quality, but not amount, of support commenters gave them. People adjust their responses based on how you describe your experiences.
🧵 6/10

Some people talked about personal challenges and their negative impact on their life, with varying detail (Profiles 1 2 & 3)

Others sought encouragement and celebrated small victories despite life's challenges (Profiles 4 & 5)
🧵 5/10

Using latent profile analysis, we found 5 different ways that people talked about their experiences.
🧵 4/10

We looked at real conversations on Reddit (r/Anxiety and r/Depression) to see how the way people talked about their experiences influenced the amount and quality of the support they received.
🧵 3/10

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Past research finds that people are more likely to support us when we are detailed and coherent. We expand upon this by exploring how the emotional tone, motivational themes, and structure of our shared stories affects how others support us. 
🧵 2/10