Speaking of Psychology: Why we complain and how to do it better, with Robin Kowalski, PhD

Whether it’s grumbling about a boss, the weather, or a spouse’s most annoying habit, we all complain. Robin Kowalski, PhD, of Clemson University, discusses why we complain; the difference between venting and complaining to get results; how to complain in a way that doesn’t wear people out; and how mindfulness and journaling can help you complain less.

Robin Kowalski, PhD, is a centennial professor of psychology at Clemson University. Her research focuses on aversive interpersonal behaviors, including complaining, teasing and bullying. She is the author or coauthor of several books, including Complaining, Teasing, and Other Annoying Behaviors. Her research on complaining has brought her international attention, including an appearance on NBC’s Today show.

Kim Mills: Grousing, whining, kvetching, complaining—whatever you call it, we all do it. Whether it’s a gripe session with your coworkers about your unreasonable boss or venting to your best friend about your spouse’s most annoying habit, complaining can feel satisfying in the moment. But psychologists who study complaining say there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it, and that complaining can have positive and negative effects on our mental health and our relationships with others.

So why do we like to complain? When does griping make us feel better and when does it make us feel worse? Are there ways to complain more effectively? And if you’re worried that you complain too much, what can you do to shift your complaining habits?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I’m Kim Mills.

My guest today is Dr. Robin Kowalski, a Centennial professor of psychology at Clemson University, where she studies complaining and other aversive behaviors such as teasing and bullying. She has authored more than 100 journal articles and book chapters and several books, including Complaining, Teasing, and Other Annoying Behaviors. Her research on complaining has been featured on the Today show and in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. In addition to doing research, she has received many honors for her teaching, including Clemson’s Phil Prince Award for Excellence in Innovation in the Classroom, and a mention in The Princeton Review’s list of the 300 best professors in the nation.

Dr. Kowalski, thank you for joining me today.

Robin Kowalski, PhD: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Mills: Good. Well, let’s start with the big question. Why do we complain so much? What’s the purpose?

Kowalski: Well, everybody does it, so it has to have a function. And I think there’s a lot of different reasons why people complain, albeit to different degrees. I think probably the most common reason we complain is just for catharsis, just to get our dissatisfactions off our chest. It just makes us feel better. Even if—let’s say it’s a person that we’re dissatisfied with, even if they can’t hear us, it still makes us feel better to do it. So I think that’s the most common function.

I think it also allows us to get information. So it really serves what we call in my field a social comparison function. If I complain about the weather, I may be wanting to get somebody else’s perception of, is it really as hot as I think it is? Or maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m getting sick, maybe there’s something wrong with me. Students oftentimes will complain about a professor, about how hard a test was, because they want to get a gauge of, was it really that hard? Maybe I just wasn’t prepared for it. So I think we oftentimes complain about something to get a response from other people.

I also think we complain to get other people to account for their behavior. So we might complain if our spouse is always late getting home from work, for example, we might be like, Why are you always late getting home? And oftentimes has that whine attached to it. But we’re wanting them to offer an explanation. Were they at the gym again or did they stay at work late? What was the reason? So we complain about the behavior in order for them to offer us an explanation.

Mills: You’ve identified two different types of complaining, right? Expressive complaining—which is just venting, which you’ve described—and instrumental complaining. So what are the differences?

Kowalski: So expressive complaining is exactly what you said. It’s just that complaining, that cathartic complaining just to get it off our chest. Instrumental complaining is complaining that’s designed to bring about a very specific function. A lot of your retail complaining, if we buy a product and we’re dissatisfied with that product and then we go to the company and say, My new vacuum cleaner is not working, there’s something wrong with it, then that’s instrumental complaining because we want them to either fix it or to just trade it in for a different one that hopefully will work. So it’s intended to bring about a very specific outcome.

Mills: Now you wrote an article in Psychology Today called “Complaining: How to Do It With Finesse.” So let’s talk about that. How can people complain more effectively and what separates an effective instrumental complaint from one that just alienates people?

Kowalski: So I think there’s a couple of key components to this. One, I think we need to complain in moderation. And two, I think we need to complain strategically. Everybody complains to different degrees. You’ve got some people who complain infrequently, although they still complain some, and then you’ve got some people who complain all the time. But you really need to complain in moderation. If you complain excessively, you’re going to wear out your audience. Your friends are going to get tired of it and they’re not going to want to spend time with you. It’s wearing. It also can make other people aware of their own dissatisfaction and maybe they don’t want to be made aware of that. So again, it creates a distancing in relationships. So you need to complain in moderation.

I think the second component to it though is you really need to do it strategically. You need to pick your audience carefully. The truth is if you have a problem with a product or service, you should complain to the manufacturer about it or go back to the store. I’m incessantly dissatisfied with my internet service, but me venting about that to my neighbors, while it makes me feel better—so on the expressive end, I’m doing better—on the instrumental end, it’s still not going to rectify any problem I have with my internet service. Whereas if I call the company up and I’m like, okay, here’s my list, and it’s usually a list of things, it’s too slow, it’s not working, it’s this, it’s that. Then again, presumably the company will do something to rectify that situation. So that’s being strategic. It’s not just venting, it’s hopefully in moderation, depends on how bad the service is, and it’s doing it strategically.

Mills: Is expressive complaining, which we’ve already described as just venting, is that good for our emotional and mental health or does it sometimes just make us feel worse?

Kowalski: I think it’s both. I think it depends on how often you do it. I based a lot of my theorizing on complaining on Dr. Jamie Pennebaker’s research on disclosure of traumatic events. And I’m not saying that complaining is the same as disclosing a traumatic event, but his research showed that if you disclose a traumatic event that you’ve never disclosed before, it produces improved physical and psychological health. So to your question, I think if we don’t complain all the time, if we don’t complain incessantly, again, if we do it in moderation and we’re strategic about it, and so we’re inhibiting sometimes, I think that’s when you get the benefit of complaining. You’re going to get—maybe initially your affect will be negative because you’re thinking about what you’re dissatisfied with, but in time, once you express it and are thinking about your dissatisfaction, sometimes when it’s in our head, it’s more muddled than it is when we actually express it and get it out.

But if you complain all the time and you’re never inhibiting, then where’s the benefit? A la Pennebaker’s research, there’s got to be some inhibition to get the release of. And again, I’m not equating complaining with the disclosure of traumatic events, but I think there’s some similarities in terms of that release of the inhibition, release of the dissatisfaction, and I think that’s when you get the benefit.

Mills: Is there a relationship between complaining and happiness? In other words, do people who complain more tend to be more or less happy than people who complain less?

Kowalski: So we have done some research on that and I do think there’s a relationship there, but I think it’s really mediated by mindfulness. And I think that’s to your point earlier about being an effective complainer, I think it all boils down to awareness. I think the more aware we are of our complaining, so to use the mindfulness terms, the more mindful we are about our own complaining, then the more effective we’re going to be. And if we’re effective complainer and whether for expressive reasons or for instrumental reasons, then we’re going to get the improvement in our affect and then we’re going to be happier. So I think it’s that awareness mindfulness link.

And it’s interesting because there’s—Will Bowen, he’s a motivational speaker, but he talks about complaining and he started this movement originally, and he had people like the live strong bracelets, he had people wear these little purple bracelets and it had “Complaint Free World,” which was his organization. And he predicated all this on the idea that it takes 21 days to make or break a habit, with the idea that complaining is a habit.

And while I don’t share all of his ideas, the premise of, okay, if I complain, I need to move it to the other wrist and start my 21 day period over, I think that works because of the mindfulness, because of the awareness. If I’m having to take the bracelet off and move it, and—my next door neighbor is a mental health counselor, and in her prior clinic, one of her therapists used it in marriage counseling. And so if you started complaining about your spouse, then you had to take the bracelet off and move it to the other wrist. And again, it’s awareness.

When I first started doing research in this area, oh my gosh, everybody was complaining. It was like it was coming out of the woodwork. No, they weren’t complaining any more than they had been, but now I was aware of it. And not only was I aware of how much they were complaining, I was also aware of how much I was complaining. But you can’t modify it if you’re not aware of it.

Mills: And what got you interested in doing research into complaining?

Kowalski: That’s a great story. So I was looking for my own research niche. I was still a few years out of grad school and I was still doing what my advisors had done and I wanted my own path. So I was talking to one of my former advisors and he said, Well, you’re such a good complainer. Why don’t you study that? Now, I’m sure he meant that facetiously, but—that’s what we’re going to say anyway, I’m going to stick to that story. But I thought, huh, that’s a good idea. So I started getting in the literature, and at that time there was only one study in psychology that had been conducted on complaining, and it was by somebody that I knew. And for him, it was just a sort of fly-by-night study. So I was like, wow, now wanting my own research niche, the world is my oyster in this case.

And I loved it. And it’s been many years that I’ve been involved in this field, and I find it just as exciting now as I did when I first started it. I think it’s because it’s a behavior that every single person engages in.

Mills: And speaking of that, is it just human nature to focus on the negative? Is that why we complain? And are there some personality traits that make people more or less prone to be complainers?

Kowalski: So I’m going to answer that by saying I think we have a distorted perception of our own complaining. We’ve done some research where we had people evaluate their own complaining and other people’s complaining, and they perceive their own complaining much more positively than they perceived other people’s complaining.

Mills: Of course.

Kowalski: And so I think that either we’re not identifying our complaints as complaints because complaining has such a pejorative tone to it, or we’re interpreting it as other people would identify it as complaining, but we’re just thinking of it as confiding, particularly if it’s expressive complaining. So we’re putting a positive slant on it. So I think there’s this almost misattribution of our own behavior relative to other people’s behavior. But I think you’re right. I think we do have this tendency, pessimist more than optimist, obviously, people with different types of locus of control, people with a higher propensity to complain. I do think there are certain people that tend to be more likely to focus on the negative and more likely to express it.

Mills: You were quoted in a recent Washington Post piece about the department that handles all the complaints that come into the Washington, DC, public transit system. And that got me thinking, what’s the emotional cost of being on the receiving end of constant complaining, especially for people who do it for a living like customer service reps?

Kowalski: I’ve thought about that a lot because I’ve been contacted by companies before to talk about that. And I think the cost can be high if that’s all you’re doing is listening to people’s complaints. And I got a letter one time from somebody that said that they were getting ready to give up a very high paying job, and it involved listening to people’s complaints for the company, because they couldn’t do it anymore. They couldn’t listen to people’s complaints. I think it takes a certain kind of person who can be that listener. I’m not sure exactly what the characteristics of that person are. I wish I could figure that out, but I think it genuinely, some people just don’t have the patience for it. Some people are just going to be like, Oh, just get over it.

Mills: Yeah, that would be me.

Kowalski: Me too. That’s exactly what I would say. But I think it takes a certain kind of person, but I think people have to know that before they go into that kind of position because if you don’t respond correctly, then you’re just going to set the person who’s complaining up to complain more.

Mills: So what is the correct way to respond to a complaint?

Kowalski: So I think what you do is, it depends. If you gauge that the other person is complaining for cathartic reasons, I think you give them their space short term, and then I think you try to redirect it. And maybe if my neighbor’s complaining about the cable company, then I think you let them complain, get it off their chest. And if they keep on and on and on about it, then the redirect is, Well, have you called the company? Have you discussed this with them? Have you gone online and expressed your complaint? So I think there’s a redirect that becomes necessary. And if it ultimately continues, then I think you have to tell them, maybe complain yourself, It bothers me when you continue to complain so much because I feel like you’re not doing anything about it.

Mills: Do you think that social media, these kinds of forums has changed the shape of public complaining and the fact that our complaints have a bigger audience than they used to and more permanence?

Kowalski: All of that is absolutely true. I mean, social media has given a platform for people to, especially anonymously in many cases, express their complaints and then people can feed and respond to those complaints. Interestingly, our research showed that people don’t use social media for retail complaining as much as we thought that they would. So I was somewhat surprised by that, but that could have just been the nature of our particular sample because I think that deserves some follow up because I was somewhat surprised by that. But what that has done, and to the point we were talking about earlier, I think that has forced companies to hire people that do nothing but deal with the complaints that are online. But if you pay attention to some of those, some of the company’s responses, it’s the same response to every complaint. I think that’s really ineffective because I find that irritating and I’m not the one complaining.

So I think if you’re going to do it, if you’re going to have a social media platform, if you’re going to allow people to complain on that social media platform, then you have to have somebody who’s going to respond in a way that you can’t say to everybody, Oh yeah, we’ll refine. I mean, you can’t immediately satisfy everybody’s needs, but I think you can respond in a way that makes people feel like you’ve been heard. Really at the end of the day, everybody just wants to feel like they matter and that they’ve been heard. And I think that will allay a lot of people’s complaints.

Mills: But speaking how companies respond, Lily Tomlin used to do this very famous bit where she played Ernestine, the telephone operator, and she’d always get a laugh with the line, “We’re the phone company. We don’t care. We don’t have to.”  Isn’t there some truth to the fact that these big monopolistic companies, they don’t care? I mean, do big companies really care if their customers are unhappy?

Kowalski: I think on some level they care, but a given person is really just a drop in the bucket for them. But the problem for them by adopting that ideology is people are going to complain to their friends and family, and then those friends and family will complain about it to somebody else. And so what starts is one person can become a much bigger group. So I think they probably are more concerned than it appears that they are.

Mills: I think a lot of us have the impression that people are more likely to post something negative. They complain when they’re unhappy rather than posting something on social media where they feel good about things. And is that just an impression or is it really true that we’re much more motivated to get out there and say something bad than we are to get out there and say something good?

Kowalski: I think in part, it depends on the person. I’m not somebody who posts a lot anyway, but I do think that people, if you’re going to take the time to post, it’s usually going to be motivated by, Oh, this is really bugging me. I think the things that are really positive that people post, like their children’s graduations or a job opportunity or something like that, I think those are less frequent than just the daily annoyances that we have that we want to complain about. So I think, because if you think about it, I was actually having this conversation earlier this morning with somebody and we were talking about, oh, there’s just always something. There’s just always something that goes wrong in the house. Every day there’s some minor annoyance, but those minor annoyances caused you to complain to other people, and that’s what we were doing.

And then those are the kinds of things that people will oftentimes post on social media. Again, I think it’s usually to just get some validation of, Oh yeah, me too. Or This is how I resolve that, or whatever it is. So I think that’s part of what motivates the negative complaining.

Mills: What about advice for someone who feels like they complain too much and they want to dial it back? I mean, what are the things that people can do besides that wristband that you mentioned? Are there other things?

Kowalski: So - but it relates to the wristband. So it’s truly be mindful. The other thing I would do is I think journaling is really important. And I know I mentioned this earlier, but when we have things in our head, that’s like that mountain out of a molehill thing, things in our head seem just so big and it’s like if you have a list of things to do, it’s just like such a huge list until you write it down and then it doesn’t seem quite as overwhelming. Well, it’s the same way with our sources of dissatisfaction. And oftentimes, particularly if you’re a chronic complainer, I think journaling can be very important because we can take all the dissatisfaction that’s in our head and we can get it down on the computer or on a piece of paper. And I still think there’s value in writing things out by hand, but wherever you put it, wherever you write it, at least it gets that jumble out of our head where we’re mulling it over and making it bigger than it should be.

And when we articulate it in writing, it loses some of its potency. And I think that it’s a very effective technique for dealing with complaining for anybody, but especially for chronic complainers who detect that they are wearing out their audience. They know they’re not complaining effectively, they’re starting to wear on people. And I think it increases their mindfulness because if they’re journaling about their complaining, then they realize how much they’re complaining. So I think it’s a highly effective technique.

Mills: And do you try to counterbalance that with some positive things while you’re journaling?

Kowalski: Oh, absolutely. And honestly, the journaling ultimately leads to more—I think there’s a pattern that people see once they start with all this negativity of, Oh, I’m upset about this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think over time they start to see a shift and the writing becomes more positive. So I think that’s part of the benefit of it is that the negative affect sort of starts to show this gradual shift toward positivity. And then they just get the benefit of journaling, period, of just writing about whatever. Oh, I saw a beautiful sunset today or whatever.

Mills: Are there demographic differences in complaining? Do we know by nationality or age or even whether men complain more than women or vice versa?

Kowalski: So we have looked at the gender. I want to be super careful how I say this. So in one of our studies, we had people list their pet peeves, which really are very specific complaints that people have. And the instructions were to list their pet peeves that they had with a relational partner. And women listed four times as many pet peeves as men did. Now, that’s the fact, that was the data. So does that mean that women are just bigger complainers? Maybe.

Mills: Or does it mean that men are more annoying?

Kowalski: Okay. You said it, not me. That was where I was going with that. Possibly. But what I think it means is that there’s a difference in how they perceive it. I think that women view it as confiding, this expression of pet peeves is confiding and men are more likely to view it as complaints. So honestly, I think it’s sort of a loose difference numerically because I think both men and women do it, but I think there’s a difference in the perception of what they’re actually doing.

In terms of nationality, we’ve never done any cross-cultural research, but I would love to. And one of the things that I think would happen is you complain when your expectations haven’t been met. That’s what fuels your dissatisfaction. And I so want to do this before I retire. I think that cultures that have the most to complain about, where there’s just such poverty, I would suspect that they complain the least, particularly compared to Western culture where we have basically whatever we want at our disposal and we complain all the time. I think it’s a difference in expectation. We expect everything to just go flawlessly and when it doesn’t, we’re just like complaining and complain, complain. But people in cultures that aren’t accustomed to having everything at their disposal, and again, this is pure speculation on my part, but I think they’d complain the least. And in my field in social psychology, we talk about relative deprivation and I would love to do that study to see if that’s the case.

Mills: And just to wind up, what are you working on now? What are the big issues that you’re looking into, the questions you want to answer?

Kowalski: So that cross-cultural thing is one of them. That’s been a perpetual one for me. We just had a study published just a few months ago, and it was looking at everyday versus retail complaining. And there is a fair amount of research on retail complaining, but there’s r eally not a ton on everyday complaining. And that’s the direction I want to go with it. I mean, we know the functions that it serves. We know what some of the outcomes are for relationships, but I really want to get it more of the nitty-gritty about everyday complaining. I’d like to get it more of the affective benefits and cost of it. We know the global perspective. Yeah, it makes you feel worse for initially because you’re thinking about your dissatisfaction, but if you do it effectively, it makes you feel better. But I would love to do some longitudinal research looking at people’s everyday complaints.

Mills: Well, Dr. Kowalski, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been fun.

Kowalski: It has been fun. Thank you so much for having me. 

Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology  on our website at speakingofpsychology.org  or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave a review. If you have comments or ideas for future episodes, you can email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman.

Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I’m Kim Mills.