We tend to be defensive socially. When we meet new people, we’re often concerned with how we’re coming off. Our anxiety causes us to be so concerned with the impression we’re creating that we fail to notice that the same is true of the other person as well. A new study led by Erica J. Boothby, published on September 5 in Psychological Science, reveals how people tend to like us more in first encounters than we’d ever suspect.
We spend an inordinate — some would say “unhealthy” — amount of time worrying about what others think of us. We don’t really know how we come off, in truth, but we regularly construct a metaperception of ourselves that represents how we think we do. And we tend to be unkind to ourselves, according to the new study.
The “liking gap”
What the study reveals is that there’s a major disconnect between the way two people are likely to judge each other on first meeting, but it’s not what you might expect. Their experiments show that in a first encounter, each person thinks well of the other person but assumes that they themselves have come off poorly. Since both parties feel this way, an almost comical asymmetry occurs, with a significant gap between how we’re viewed and how we think we’re viewed.
Co-author Margaret S. Clark tells YaleNews, “We call this a ‘liking gap,’ and it can hinder our ability to develop new relationships.” She adds, “They seem to be too wrapped up in their own worries about what they should say or did say to see signals of others’ liking for them, which observers of the conservations see right away.”
Since both people like the other person more than they assume they themselves are being liked, “We’re self-protectively pessimistic and do not want to assume the other likes us before we find out if that’s really true.” This makes the process more awkward than it needs to be, risking the loss of an opportunity for enjoyment. Later on, “We critically monitor ourselves and regret not telling the joke more smoothly or worry about whether we sound as if we are bragging.”
The study’s experiments
Boothby and her colleagues performed a series of experiments.
Experiment 1a: Is There a Liking Gap?
In this test, the researchers recruited 36 people from the Yale community, 72.2 percent female, and 27.8 percent male. The average age of participants was 23.25 years, with a standard deviation of 6.12 years.
Each subject was introduced to a same-sex partner, and, having been provided some ice-breaking questions to keep the conversation going, the two were seated side-by-side at a large table and tasked with chatting until a researcher returned in five minutes. The conversation was recorded on a computer nearby that displayed a large analog-style clock to help the new acquaintances pace themselves.
Afterward, the subjects were separated and asked to rate their agreement with eight statements.
Four assessed how much they liked the other person:
- “I generally liked the other participant.”
- “I would be interested in getting to know the other participant better.”
- “If given the chance, I would like to interact with the other participant again.”
- “I could see myself becoming friends with the other participant.”
Four assessed how much they thought the other person like them:
- “The other participant generally liked me.”
- “The other participant would be interested in getting to know me better.”
- “If given the chance, the other participant would like to interact with me again.”
- “The other participant could see himself/herself becoming friends with me.”
The researchers concluded, “after a brief conversation with another person, people significantly underestimated how much others liked them.” They found their experiment “provided the predicted evidence of the liking gap.”
Before moving on, a follow-up test, 1b, assessed whether or not subjects were clearly signifying their approval of each other during the conversation, and the researchers concluded that they clearly had — the signals were just not being picked up.
Study 2: Why Does the Liking Gap Exist?
In this experiment with paired same-sex conversant