MOST of you are probably not aware that, in the last month, many seniors in high school have learned whether they have been accepted to their top-choice college.

Or maybe you are. Maybe, even if you have no interest in this news, you’ve heard it reverberating on social media and across phone lines. Some call it celebrating. Others call it bragging.

As a newcomer to all of this, I was fascinated by the self-imposed rules that people have about how and when it’s proper to boast about such an achievement.

Some friends told me they thought it was fine for students to post about their acceptances and let their friends know, but too much for parents announce their son’s or daughter’s accomplishment online. Others felt that students should hold back in deference to peers who may have been rejected, but gave free rein to proud mothers and fathers.

Watching people parse the sharing of good news made me think about the bigger issue of bragging. As I researched it further, it became clear that this is something most of us are conflicted about: we want to let people know about our successes, but we don’t want to appear to be doing so. And we want to hear about others’ victories, but not too often or too loudly.

There is a common perception that it’s more acceptable to brag now than it was in the past, especially about our children. It used to be that parents didn’t want their children to get swollen heads (when’s the last time you heard that expression?) or, for more superstitious reasons, feared that praise would bring on the wrath of the gods, or at least bad luck.

Such trends are hard to measure. What is clear is that technology has provided “more outlets and a lot more reinforcement,” said Susan Krauss Whitbourne, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “Every cute thing a baby does is on YouTube.”

There are many reasons people feel the need to publicize their successes, ranging from sharing the joy to one-upping. But what research shows is that talking about ourselves just feels good.

Last year, two Harvard neuroscientists published a paper, “Disclosing Information About the Self Is Intrinsically Rewarding,” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They conducted brain imaging and behavioral experiments and found that when people talked about themselves, there was heightened activity in the same brain regions associated with rewards from food, money or sex.

Diana I. Tamir, co-author of the study and a doctoral student at Harvard, said the research focused not on bragging, but on answering neutral questions about one’s personality.

“When asked questions about themselves, there was more reward activity than when asked about someone else,” Ms. Tamir said. And there was even more activity when the participants could choose to share information, by pressing a button, with someone outside the scanner.

Another experiment found that people were willing to give up small amounts of money to reveal information about themselves, rather than talk about someone else.

“I think there is a natural human tendency” to talk about oneself, Ms. Tamir said. “The interesting question is why we are motivated to share.”

Another interesting question is when sharing turns into bragging — and the answer is often in the eye of the beholder. As one commenter wrote on the Canadian blog wondercafe.ca, “I wonder if it’s sharing if I do it and bragging if someone else does it.”

Although boasting may seem more acceptable now, Susan A. Speer, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Manchester in England, has found that “self-praise” is still largely considered unacceptable.

Professor Speer, a conversation analyst, looked at a variety of data, from psychiatric interventions to everyday conversations, that involved self-praise. The information came from the United States and Britain.

In her study, published last year in the Social Psychology Quarterly, Professor Speer discovered that in almost every case, directly praising oneself seemed to violate social norms.

She said people responded to self-praise negatively or, more subtly, with a long silence or a roll of the eyes.

E-mail: shortcuts@nytimes.com

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/your-money/the-etiquette-of-celebrating-or-bragging-about-achievements.html?partner=rss&emc=rss