Psychology says people may like you more than you think after meeting you for the first time
Have you ever met someone new and felt butterflies in the stomach? Or failed to make a good impression? Perhaps you replayed a particular scene a hundred times in your head and doubted whether the other person genuinely liked your company, or worried that the conversation had been more meaningful to you than it was to them. If this sounds familiar, then there might be an explanation in psychology for your feelings. It might offer a reassuring explanation: you may be underestimating how much the other person enjoyed meeting you.What psychology says?This tendency is known as the liking gap, a psychological phenomenon explored by researchers Erica Boothby, Gus Cooney, Gillian Sandstrom and Margaret S. Clark in a series of studies published in 2018. Their research, published in the Psychological Science journal, suggests that people often underestimate how much their conversation partners like them after an initial interaction.The reason behind the ‘liking gap’
Understanding Liking Gap
The 2018 study, titled The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?, examined how accurately people judge the impressions they make on others. The researchers conducted five studies involving strangers getting acquainted, college students meeting their dorm mates and adults participating in a personal development workshop.In one experiment, students who had never met before were paired up for five-minute conversations to discuss familiar icebreaker topics like where they come from and what they enjoyed doing. Then they were asked to rate how much they liked the other person.The results revealed: people tended to like their conversation partners more than they believed those partners liked them.One explanation lies in the way we evaluate our own behaviour.During a conversation, we have access to every thought that crosses our mind. We know when we struggle to find the right words, when a joke does not come out as intended or when we briefly lose track of what the other person is saying. We may also be acutely aware of our nervousness, even when it is barely noticeable to anyone else.The other person, however, does not have access to this running commentary. They see our words, expressions, gestures and responses, not the private doubts behind them.According to the researchers, this difference can distort our judgment. We assess ourselves using our internal experience, including our self-criticism, while evaluating the other person largely through what they say and do. As a result, we may be harsher judges of our own conversational performance than we are of theirs.What can you do differently after meeting someone new?The findings offer a simple lesson: do not treat your post-conversation doubts as reliable evidence of what another person thinks of you.Here are a few ways to demonstrate that idea:
- Stop replaying every sentence: It is natural to go back and think about a conversation. A conversation does not have to be flawless to be enjoyable.
- Give the other person the benefit of the doubt: If someone was friendly, engaged with what you were saying or asked questions about your life, allow yourself to consider that they genuinely enjoyed your company.
- Take the initiative sometimes: If you enjoyed meeting someone, send a message, suggest another conversation or follow up on something you discussed. You do not need absolute certainty about their feelings before making a friendly gesture.
- Remember that nervousness is not necessarily visible: You may feel awkward internally while appearing perfectly approachable to someone else.
- Allow connections time to develop: Relationships often take repeated interactions to develop.
The message behind the psychologyWhen we meet someone new, we can become so occupied with managing our own impression that we overlook the possibility that the other person is doing exactly the same thing. They, too, may be wondering whether they sounded interesting, whether their joke landed or whether you enjoyed talking to them.
Message behind (canva)
The research by Boothby and her colleagues suggests that we should be careful about trusting this negative interpretation.So, the next time you meet someone new and find yourself wondering whether you made a good impression, consider a different possibility: perhaps the conversation went better than you think.
