What is it about?
When people share good news with others—a process known as "capitalization"—the reaction they receive can make or break the moment. While enthusiastic responses build stronger bonds, less is known about the underlying psychological processes that help responders react effectively. In this study, 103 pairs of strangers discussed a meaningful positive life event, then watched a video of the conversation and continuously rated their emotions. The findings revealed that coexperienced positive affect—moments when both individuals simultaneously felt positive emotions—was the key driver of enthusiastic, supportive responses. Simply understanding or caring about someone’s good news was not enough; sharing the emotional spark of joy in the moment was what truly facilitated effective capitalization responses.
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Why is it important?
Most empathy research focuses on how people respond to suffering, yet in daily life, opportunities for positive empathy occur roughly three times more often. This study bridges empathy and relationship research by demonstrating that sharing positive emotions (i.e., feeling positive with others) underpins supportive responses when people share good news. Crucially, positive emotion sharing provided interpersonal benefits without the emotional drawbacks that can occur when sharing negative feelings. This supports the idea of "wise empathy"—actively tuning into and sharing others' positive emotions to enhance personal well-being, support others, and build stronger social connections.
Perspectives
I enjoyed working on this article. It was great to bridge the relationships literature with work on empathy to think more about how empathy impacts the receiver of empathy in a positive context. It was also a lot of fun to work with such a rich dataset, and with such awesome collaborators.
Gregory Depow
University of California San Diego
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Build better relationships: Positive empathy and capitalization., Emotion, July 2026, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001707.
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