s from a pool of 84 students and recent graduates — 59.5 percent female, 40.5 percent male and a median age of 19.25 years — there were no icebreakers provided. Instead, the instructions were simple: “You’ll have about five minutes to talk, and you can talk about whatever you like. I’ll keep time from the other room and then return when it’s time to move on.”
Afterward, they were separately asked two questions:
- “What are the top three moments from your conversation that caused you to form the impression of the other person that you did?”
- What are the top three moments from your conversation that caused the other person to form the impression of you that he/she did?”
Subjects were then asked to describe the significant moments in detail and assign them a rating of 1–7, from “extremely negative” to “extremely positive.”
The researchers were able to conclude, “When participants reflected on their conversations, their most salient thoughts about how others viewed them were more negative than their most salient thoughts about how they viewed others, and this difference was related to how much they believed their conversation partners liked them.”
Study 3: Does the Liking Gap Persist in Longer Conversations?
In their third experiment, this time with 102 subjects — 52.9 percent female, 47.1 percent male and a median age of 23.62 — were given up to 45 minutes to chat about anything, self-regulating the duration as they saw fit, and then questioned.
The team wanted to ascertain whether the length of a conversation affected the presence of a liking gap. The answer? No: “In sum, across conversations that ranged from 2 min to 45 min, people systematically underestimated the extent to which their conversation partners liked them and enjoyed the conversation.”
Study 4: Can the Liking Gap Be Observed in the Real World?
To find this out, 128 people attending “How to Talk to Strangers” workshops were evaluated —52 percent female, 42 percent male and a median age of 29.61.
Before pairing off to talk for five minutes with someone they’d selected and didn’t know, subjects were questioned on their expectations. They were asked to guess how interesting they would find their conversation partner to be and how interesting they thought their partner would find them.
After the conversations ended, subjects were again questioned, this time about how interesting they found their partner and how interesting they felt their partner had found them.
An analysis of their responses revealed that, yes, the liking effect is not just something that happens in the unnatural environment of the lab. Interestingly, in this case, it existed both before and after the experiment, with researchers finding that, “when anticipating a future conversation, participants underestimated how interesting their conversation partner would find them. This mistaken belief persisted — and indeed was magnified — after participants actually talked to their conversation partner.”
Study 5: Does the Liking Gap Persist Over Time?
In this final test about the persistence and long-term effect of the liking gap, 102 first-year college students — 49.5 percent female and 50.5 percent male — participated in a year-long study looking into “how relationships normally develop.”
They were questioned at the beginning of the study and then four other times over the course of the year regarding from one to four people in their dorm area. Of the other people, they were asked:
- “How much do you like [name of suite mate]?”
- “How interested are you in getting to know [name of suite mate] better?”
- “How interested are you in becoming better friends with [name of suite mate]?”
- “How interested are you in spending more time with [name of suite mate]?”
They were also asked how they thought they were perceived:
- “How much do you think [name of suite mate] likes you?”
- “How interested do you think [name of suite mate] is in getting to know you better?”
- “How interested do you think [name of suite mate] is in becoming better friends with you?”
- “How interested do you think [name of suite mate] is