If you're like most people, you have a clear, hands down favorite topic for most of your conversations—yourself. On average, people spend 60 percent of conversations talking about themselves—and this figure jumps to 80 percent when communicating via social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook. Now a study summarized in Scientific American reveals why we like talking about ourselves so much—because it feels good.

Researchers from Harvard asked 195 participants to talk about themselves or other people. As they talked, the researchers scanned their brains. The results of the study showed that self-disclosure (or talking about ourselves) lit up the parts of our brain associated with motivation and reward—the same parts of the brain associated with pleasures like comfort food (fried chicken, pizza, or macaroni and cheese) or a hit from cocaine. The article put it this way: "Activation of this system [in the brain] when discussing the self suggests that self-disclosure … may be inherently pleasurable—and that people may be motivated to talk about themselves more than other topics (no matter how interesting or important these non-self topics may be)."

In other words, we love talking about ourselves because it feels good. It's a neurological buzz.