PSYCHOLOGY: Overcome social anxiety (The Liking Gap)

A very interesting study that has recently been published in Psychological Science is the study The Liking Gap. Do people like us more than we think? And I think it's really interesting for people with social anxiety because it tells us that if we interact with a stranger, we usually are perceived much better than we think. So what they did was quite simple. They put together two people and they made them talk about something and afterwards they asked them about the interaction. They asked them, do you think the other person liked you? And on the other hand, they also asked whether they themselves liked the other person. And they found a gap between these judgments, which was that every time they did this experiment and they repeated it several times, every time it turned out that people were liked more by other people than they thought. And of course, from a methodological point of view, you can criticize this study and you can say, well, maybe if you are asked whether you think that the other person likes you, you might be a little bit careful not to brag. You might say, well, I think the other person likes me, yes, a little bit, maybe a little bit. So this could be something you can criticize about this study. On the other hand, we have already seen several studies about the psychological influence tactic, which is called dialogue involvement. And in those studies could be shown that whenever a person talks with a stranger about the weather or just anything, just small talk, afterwards the other person becomes more helpful towards you. So if you talk to another person just about anything, the other person usually becomes more helpful. So this is something really interesting for people who struggle to talk to strangers because you should know that usually when you talk to a stranger, the other person will like you more than you think and the other person might even become more helpful towards you. And I hope this realization can be helpful for some people. So that's it for today and I hope to see you next time.