Mind & behavior · 2022
Do we underestimate how much people appreciate us reaching out?
Yes. Across a series of experiments, people reaching out to someone in their social circle underestimated how much the recipient appreciated it. The gap was larger when the contact was more unexpected or the people were less socially close. This is a group-level finding, not a guarantee about every relationship.
Details
A brief check-in or a small gift can let someone know you are thinking of them. In experiments with research plans registered in advance, researchers examined whether people initiating contact accurately anticipated recipients’ appreciation. Across the experiments, they found a consistent tendency to underestimate it.
Recipients focused more on feeling surprised than initiators did, and greater focus on surprise predicted greater appreciation. The underestimation was also larger in surprising rather than unsurprising contexts, and between people who were less rather than more socially close. These results support surprise as one possible explanation, rather than proving it is the only cause.
The abstract does not report participant demographics, sample sizes or the size of the appreciation gap, so it cannot tell us how large the effect is or how broadly it applies.
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