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Your faithful writer,
Dr. Daniel Smith

Dearest Daily Concept readers,

I recently came across an interesting concept called ‘The Liking Gap’ that I wanted to share with you all.

It’s an idea that was introduced by academic researchers in a 2018 paper to describe the gap between people’s perception of their own likeability and the perception others have of their likeability.

The paper’s authors conducted social experiments and found that people “systematically underestimated how much their conversation partners liked them and enjoyed their company, an illusion we call the liking gap.”

This interesting hypothesis is based on a relatively small experiment, and the authors aren’t claiming to that they’ve revolutionized the field of psychology.

Instead, the concept of a ‘liking gap’ offers an interesting avenue for thinking about human self-awareness and the dynamics of self-criticism and self-comparison that humanity has always dealt with.

Self-comparison and the lives of others

The creators of the ‘liking gap’ hypothesis are not the only researchers to find evidence showing that people have negative & inaccurate beliefs about how others see them.

A 2017 meta-analysis paper identified 11 studies showing that “most people think that others lead richer and more active social lives than they do themselves.”

In the paper, which has the humorous name Home Alone: Why people believe others’ social lives are richer than their own, the researchers conclude that:

Healthy self & overcoming impostor syndrome

There are countless reasons why humans are prone to self-comparison: social, technological, biological, philosophical, and more.

In a world of celebrity culture and ubiquitous social media, it’s natural that people are more prone to comparing their worst moments to others’ best. We can even feel that we are ‘impostors’ who must hide our innate failings alongside our peers who ‘belong’.

We all struggle with these feelings, just as our parents, grandparents, and ancestors did in a world before social media and smart phones. I imagine that our hominid ancestors may also have felt shame about the size of their caves or about their hunting prowess relative to their fellow tribesmen.

Concepts like the ‘liking gap’ are helpful for reminding ourselves that negative self-perceptions are often inaccurate and that we may have an innate tendency to be too self-critical or hard on ourselves.

Even if we are interested in self-improvement and bettering ourselves, it’s important to remember that we are perfectly fine as we are. It’s too easy to get caught up in the game of self-comparison and to forget that other people actually like us for who we are, not because of who we will become.

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Thank you for reading. Please reply to this email if you have any thoughts or feedback.

Yours,
Dan