By Have you ever gone over a conversation with someone in your head and regretted having said certain things? Do you worry that you made a bad impression and weren’t more witty and sparkling? There is a reason for this feeling. We’ll explain it to you!
Most of us like meeting new people. However, during these experiences, a shadow often appears in our minds, a very recurrent existential pang. What impression did we make on that person during the first contact? Did they like us? After these doubts, a phenomenon arises that can be exhausting at times.
Suddenly we find ourselves mentally reviewing the conversation we just had. We analyze it word by word like KGB agents looking for loopholes, for those mistakes that may have given a faulty impression of ourselves. Some people spend a few minutes on this mental task; others fall into an endless loop that can last for hours.
Most of us would like to be more likeable, to have that magnetic charisma that can captivate anyone from the first minute. People need to be liked by others because in the game of social chess, human connections are important . Giving an image of trust and closeness is a basic principle in our socio-emotional fabric.
This basic principle of sociability often leads to suffering more than one cognitive distortion, not without some anguish…
People, on average, tend to underestimate the impression they make on others.
The Pleasure Gap, a collective experience
William James was one of the first psychologists to study our need for social connection . A pioneer in the scientific study of psychological phenomena, he focused on eye contact. He talked about how babies, in addition to needing food and protection, also long for the loving gaze of their parents.
It is through our eyes that we usually assess whether someone likes us or whether they distrust us. When we meet someone new, we analyze in a thousand ways whether they like us or disapprove of us. However, and here comes the most interesting fact, on average, people tend to underestimate the impression they leave on others.
In other words, we are accompanied by a cognitive bias that tells us things like “you made a mistake when you said this, you should have said that , that comment was stupid, he must think you are boring…”. The vast majority of us have fallen into this type of mental trap at some point. The problem comes when this perception becomes almost obsessive and leads to social anxiety .
The importance of the judgment others make about us
What others think of us matters to us. Even more so if we are young. The theory of the liking gap tells us that the anxiety to be liked and the tendency to underestimate ourselves can ruin our relationships . It is true that we do not always reach these extremes, but doubts, the habit of re-evaluating our conversations , create a somewhat uncomfortable mental grey cloud.
We would love to be able to ask the person we just met what impression they liked about us. However, when it comes to social relationships, we are groping around in trial and error, navigating as best we can in that ocean that often makes us feel a bit anxious . And this is because we are programmed to connect, to create bonds and to be part of social groups.
Being liked is synonymous with being part of a group, something that we certainly pursue when we are teenagers and not so much as adults. At a more mature age, it is enough for us to maintain a few quality alliances.
Your assumptions are not always true: you are more liked than you think
In a study conducted jointly by Yale, Cornell, Harvard and Essex universities, they analyzed the phenomenon of the liking gap. One thing that became evident is the fact that most of us have a very critical internal dialogue. It is this dialogue that feeds us negative assumptions about the impact we have on the people we have just met.
This uncertainty is marked by not knowing yet what values and what type of personality those people we have spoken to have. Those people we want to like at all costs. However, research has shown that, on average, we tend to like ourselves more than we think and these biased ideas are completely unfounded.
Now, why do we have such a Machiavellian internal judge? Why does it torture us by making us analyze everything that is said and torturing us for what we said or did not say? The truth is that doubting our positive impact on others encourages us to try to improve our social skills.
Of course, the ideal is not to go to the extreme of constantly and obsessively questioning ourselves…
Our concern about being liked by others arises between the ages of 7 and 9, when integration with our peers becomes a priority.
How to Stop Doubting Yourself When You Meet Someone New
The liking gap becomes a very important mental framework during adolescence . As the years go by and we reach maturity, we are less concerned about the impression we make on the person we just met. We feel more self-assured and self-confidence underpins much of our daily interaction.
But what can we do if that little, insecure voice persists in our mental universe? What strategies can we apply when we keep going around in circles in our conversations, and we fear always giving a bad impression to new people who come into our lives? Let’s analyze it.
Doubts are a common phenomenon, the other person thinks the same
“Will he think I’m unfriendly? Will he think I talk too much or too little? Will he think I’m boring and uninteresting?” Sometimes we can spend hours mulling over these thoughts. But we need to understand something very basic. Everyone has self-doubts when they first meet someone.
Most of us need to be liked by others. So chances are that while we’re mulling over that first conversation, the other person is doing exactly the same thing.
Like yourself and the right people will like you
The liking gap can be a real torture if we give it too much power. It can send us into the abyss of social anxiety, into assuming that we will always make fools of ourselves and that others will judge us at every turn. Few realities are more liberating than being ourselves and letting the right people come into our lives.
Self-confidence, perceiving ourselves as precious beings with the most interesting virtues and assets, will allow us to walk through life with greater confidence. It is not necessary – or healthy – to please everyone . It is enough to connect with those figures who are in harmony with our values and personality. Nothing more.
It is true that the fabric of social relationships can be tortuous at times. However, this is a journey of constant learning in which we must never lack that well-calibrated compass of self-love and self-esteem. Only in this way will we forge the best connections.