Mind & behavior · 2018
After talking with someone new, do we tend to underestimate how much they liked us?
Yes—in these studies, people tended to underestimate how much their conversation partners liked them and enjoyed their company compared with those partners’ own assessments. This pattern appeared among strangers in a laboratory, first-year college dorm mates, and people meeting at a personal development workshop. It describes a general tendency, not what every conversation partner thinks.
Details
Talking with someone new can leave you wondering what impression you made. Across several studies, researchers compared people’s estimates of how much their conversation partners liked them and enjoyed their company with those partners’ own assessments. People systematically underestimated these reactions—a pattern the researchers called the “liking gap.”
The pattern appeared in laboratory conversations and real-world settings, across conversations of different lengths. Among first-year college dorm mates, it lasted for several months as relationships developed. The abstract does not report sample sizes or the size of the gap, so it does not establish how large this tendency is or how consistently it applies to a particular person.
What do you think?
Good conversations begin with curiosity.
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