Those self-loving status updates in your friends’ feeds on Facebook (News - Alert) have a little bit of science to explain why people do them. It sounds silly, but it’s true.

By talking about ourselves, we’re entertaining the part of our brain that experiences the same pleasures that come from food and money. So, tweeting and updating the world about how awesome your hair looks today, to some degree, is good for your ego.

All of this comes from Harvard University’s behavioral experiments performed by neuroscientists. They say that this behavior feels rewarding, so sometimes we just can’t help ourselves and we go boasting for a little pick-me-up.

"Self-disclosure is extra rewarding," said Harvard neuroscientist, Diana Tamir, who conducted the experiments with Harvard colleague, Jason Mitchell, the Wall Street Journal reports. "People were even willing to forgo money in order to talk about themselves," Tamir said.

It is estimated that 40 percent of our everyday chatter is devoted to telling others about what we feel or think.

In some of the tests, volunteers were offered money to answer questions about other people. In spite of financial enticement, people still preferred to talk about themselves and, “willingly gave up between 17 percent and 25 percent of their potential earnings so they could reveal personal information,” the report notes.

"We joked that this was the penny for your thoughts study," Tamir said.

Two years ago, a study out of Toronto’s York University said Facebook narcissism is actually connected to low self-esteem.

Psychology researcher, Soraya Mehdizadeh conducted the study as an undergraduate. She gained access to 100 accounts of college students and from there, measured normal social networking activities, like photo sharing and wall postings.

What she discovered is that narcissists and people with lower self-esteem were more likely to spend more than an hour a day on Facebook and were more prone to post self-promotional photos, like striking a pose. Narcissists were also more likely to showcase themselves through status updates that were self-serving.

Given that, the current research makes sense. If these so-called bragging rights are linked to the feel-good stuff in the brain, it seems only natural that those with esteem rating in on the low end would use social media to give themselves a quick positive shot to the ego.

As the current research from Tamir notes, “acts of self-disclosure were accompanied by spurts of heightened activity in brain regions belonging to the mesolimbic dopamine system,” meaning the same rewards if pleasure that comes from food, money and sex.

So, if you’re having a bad day or need a little boost, perhaps it’s not a terrible thing to go ahead and tell the world how awesome your jeans fit today? There’s no promise that anyone will care or respond, but if it does your brain good, so be it.