Do people like you more than you think?
On average, people like you more than you think.
After a conversation, people underestimated how much the other person liked them. Researchers call this the liking gap. It has appeared with strangers, roommates, work teams and children.
What the studies found
- Strangers. After meeting in a lab, people underestimated how much their partner liked them.
- Roommates. First-year college students showed the gap with dorm mates, and it lasted for months.
- Workshops. Adults meeting at a personal development workshop showed it too.
- Teams. It appeared in small groups and in engineering teams working on a project.
- Children. In a study of 241 children, the gap began at age 5.
Who feels it most
A study of 2,753 people looked at who feels this gap. People with lower self-esteem and more social anxiety felt a larger gap. Another study tied the gap to focusing on the negative parts of your impression.
See how you come across
Your feeling after a conversation is one view. The test gives you a second view. It measures how you come across from what you do on camera.
The atlas lists every trait the test measures.
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Sources
- Boothby, Cooney, Sandstrom & Clark (2018). The liking gap in conversations: do people like us more than we think? Psychological Science.
- Mastroianni, Cooney, Boothby & Reece (2021). The liking gap in groups and teams. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
- Wolf, Nafe & Tomasello (2021). The development of the liking gap. Psychological Science.
- Tissera, Elsaadawy, Cooney, Human & Carlson (2025). Evaluating the psychological and social nature of actual and perceived liking gaps. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.