The liking gap in conversations: Do people like us more than we think?
Boothby, Cooney, Sandstrom and Clark's 2018 paper reports that after conversations with new people, participants underestimated how much their partners liked them and enjoyed their company, a pattern the authors call the liking gap. It appeared among laboratory strangers, first-year college dormitory residents and members of the public at a personal development workshop, persisted across conversation lengths, and persisted for months as the dormitory residents formed new relationships. Used at abstract level.
Boothby, Cooney, Sandstrom and Clark's 2018 paper reports that after conversations with new people, participants underestimated how much their partners liked them and enjoyed their company, a pattern the authors call the liking gap. It appeared among laboratory strangers, first-year college dormitory residents and members of the public at a personal development workshop, persisted across conversation lengths, and persisted for months as the dormitory residents formed new relationships. Used at abstract level.
Written from the abstract summary at the Crossref record, read 2026-11-01.
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Boothby, E. J., Cooney, G., Sandstrom, G. M., & Clark, M. S. (2018). The liking gap in conversations: Do people like us more than we think? Psychological Science, 29(11), 1742-1756. doi:10.1177/0956797618783714 https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618783714