Why are we so critical of ourselves after meeting someone new? Self-protection. – Casson Living – World News, Breaking News, International News

Social interactions often leave us feeling defensive. When we encounter new individuals, we are frequently preoccupied with how we appear to them. This anxiety can cloud our judgment, making us overly focused on our own impressions and overlooking the fact that the other person likely feels the same way. A recent study by Erica J. Boothby, published on September 5 in Psychological Science, uncovers a surprising truth: people tend to have a more favorable view of us during initial meetings than we might expect.

We spend an excessive amount of time — some may say “unhealthy” — worrying about others’ opinions of us. The reality is, we don’t truly know how we come across, but we often create a distorted self-perception that reflects our assumptions about how others see us. This new research suggests that we are often too hard on ourselves.

The Concept of the “Liking Gap”

The study reveals a striking disparity in how two individuals evaluate one another during their first meeting, and it’s not what you might think. The experiments indicate that in initial encounters, both individuals tend to have a positive perception of each other but simultaneously believe they themselves have made a poor impression. This leads to a humorous mismatch, where there exists a significant gap between how we perceive ourselves and how we are actually perceived.

Co-author Margaret S. Clark explained to YaleNews, “We refer to this phenomenon as the ‘liking gap,’ and it can impede our ability to forge new connections.” She elaborated, “People are often too absorbed in their own worries about what they should have said or did say to notice the signs of mutual liking that observers can recognize immediately.”

Since both individuals tend to like one another more than they believe they are liked in return, “We adopt a self-protective pessimism, hesitating to assume the other person has positive feelings for us until we have confirmation.” This mindset complicates interactions unnecessarily, potentially causing missed opportunities for enjoyment. Subsequently, “We become overly critical of ourselves, regretting not delivering a joke more effectively or fretting over whether we came off as boastful.”

Details of the Study’s Experiments

Boothby and her team conducted a variety of experiments.

Experiment 1a: Investigating the Liking Gap

In this initial experiment, 36 participants from the Yale community were recruited, with 72.2 percent identifying as female and 27.8 percent as male. The average age of the participants was 23.25, with a standard deviation of 6.12 years.

Each participant was paired with a same-sex partner, provided with a set of icebreaker questions to facilitate conversation. They were seated side by side at a large table and instructed to engage in dialogue until a researcher returned in five minutes. The conversation was recorded with a nearby computer featuring a prominent analog clock to help them manage time. After their interaction, the participants were separated and asked to rate their agreement with eight statements: four gauging how much they liked their partner and the remaining four assessing how much they believed their partner liked them. The researchers concluded that individuals significantly underestimated the extent of their partner’s liking after just a brief conversation, coining the term “liking gap.”

A subsequent test, Experiment 1b, aimed to determine whether participants were signaling their approval during the conversation. While the researchers found evidence that these signals were indeed present, they were not accurately interpreted. Study 2 examined the reasons behind the liking gap by having paired same-sex participants converse without any icebreakers. The findings indicated that participants harbored more negative thoughts about how they were perceived than about their evaluations of others, leading to the belief that their partners did not like them.

In Study 3, it was established that the liking gap persisted across conversations of varying lengths, with participants continually underestimating how much their conversation partners liked them. Study 4 assessed the liking gap in real-world scenarios, revealing that participants underestimated how interesting their conversation partners would find them both before and after their discussions. Finally, Study 5 explored the long-term implications of the liking gap, discovering that it continued to influence perceptions over a year, underscoring the importance of initial impressions in relationship-building.

Overall, this research suggests that people frequently underestimate the degree to which others like them, highlighting the critical role that early interactions play in shaping perceptions and connections. So, the next time you meet someone new, keep in mind that they are likely just as concerned about your opinion of them as you are about theirs.