Liking gap

The liking gap is the disparity between how much a person believes that another person likes them, and that other person's actual opinion. Studies have found that most people underestimate how much other people like them and enjoy their company.

Empirical research
The study which first investigated the liking gap looked at people's interactions in various scenarios: strangers meeting for the first time in a laboratory setting, first-year college students getting to know their dorm mates, members of the general public getting to know each other during a personal development workshop. People tended to underestimate how much their conversation partners liked and enjoyed their company. The gap was also seen in the year-long section of the study looking at dorm mates. The dorm mates participated in multiple tests over the year and the gap consistently appeared. It was reliably shown that people's views of their own conversation tended to be more negative than their view of other people's performance. In another study, videos of first encounters were judged based on verbal or nonverbal cues of enjoyment. Even when cues were obvious to outside observers, the gap persisted with the participants. It was also evident in conversations of varying lengths; conversations that were short, medium, and long were compared and the gap appeared in all categories of conversation length.

There is evidence that suggests the liking gap begins to develop from the age of 5, as this is around the time when children begin to become more aware of and concerned with the ways that they are evaluated by others.

The gap does not show that people are always negative. Research suggests that people usually have favorable views about themselves and others. However, there is evidence that people tend to exhibit self-criticism when thinking about their own interactions with others.