If you get scared when you go skydiving, perhaps a good way to cope is to team up with someone who feels the same. A new study suggests sharing your feelings of stress with someone having a similar emotional reaction to the same situation reduces levels of stress more than sharing them with someone who is not.

Study leader Sarah Townsend, assistant professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles, says their findings could be helpful for people experiencing stress at work:

“For instance, when you’re putting together an important presentation or working on a high-stakes project, these are situations that can be threatening and you may experience heightened stress. But talking with a colleague who shares your emotional state can help decrease this stress.”

She and her colleagues invited 52 female undergraduates to take part in a study on public speaking where they had to prepare and give a speech that would be recorded on video.

Before giving their speeches, the participants were placed in pairs and encouraged to discuss with each other how they felt about the situation.

The researchers measured the participants’ emotional states, and how threatening they perceived giving a speech to be. They also took measures of the stress hormone cortisol, before, during and after the speeches.