We Vastly Underestimate How Much People Like Us
There’s an internet meme that goes around every so often with the words “we’d worry less about what people think of us if we realised how rarely they do”. Humans are social creatures. We seek community and togetherness in a range of ways. Forming communities — be it online or in real life — requires that those we perceive as “our people” like us and like being around us.
But this quote attempts to use indifference as a point of comfort. Is indifference really enough to quell those anxieties? Is it really the key to understanding the gap between how much people like us and how much we believe they like us?
A recent article in Harvard Business Review highlighted a ten-year study that put people together who had never met before. Across both work and social situations, they questioned each of them on both how much they liked the other person and how much they thought the other person liked them — if at all. The perception of what it means to like that person and vice versa was open to interpretation, so it wasn’t driven by a clear set of defined criteria to tick off. It was simply “did you like this person, and how much do you think they liked you?”
That study is here:
