REALIZING THE UPSIDE OF VENTING: THE ROLE OF THE "CHALLENGER LISTENER"

This article investigates the positive and negative influence that listeners can have on venters' ability to respond to routine workplace frustrations. Across three studies, findings converge upon the explanation that listeners who challenge the thoughts and feeling of venters were the most helpful for problem-solving. The helpfulness of these responses did not depend on providing relevant information to solve the problem, but instead, the benefit came from the signal to rethink their initial reaction. Results also indicate that the listeners who are most likely to provide those "challenging" responses (who we call challenger listeners) are not the listeners that venters typically choose. Instead, venters prefer supportive listeners-which is likely the reason that the positive utility of venting has been difficult to detect in previous research. Consistent with the extant literature, venting with or without a response in our studies never made venters feel better.