Imagine that you have just come out of a conversation or meeting with someone you meet for the first time or a business meeting, and on your way back home an internal scene begins that no one sees except you. You repeat the words, analyze the tone of your voice, and search your facial expressions as if you were in front of a strict internal court: “I was talking a lot,” “That story was boring,” “Why did you interrupt him?”
At the same time, the other person may be saying to himself: “The conversation was very interesting, I hope we meet again.”
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This discrepancy between what you think and what the other actually feels is what is called the “Liking Gap,” that is, the distance between others’ evaluation of us after interacting with them, and our evaluation of ourselves. The irony is that many people come away convinced that they left a negative impression, while the other party often enjoyed the conversation and felt more comfortable than they expected.
Focusing on mistakes is a distorted lens for the self
One of the fundamental reasons behind this gap is what can be called “selective error magnification.” During the dialogue, the other party may not notice a slight slip or a short pause in speech, because he is busy trying to understand, or thinking about his response, or even worrying about his own impression as well. This is what was indicated by studies conducted at the Clark Relationships Laboratory at Yale University.
But after the meeting ends, the mind replays the scene in a completely different way:
- It highlights every small error with an exaggerated percentage.
- He ignores the positive moments that went smoothly.
The problem here is not a lack of awareness, but rather a cognitive bias that makes us see ourselves with a strictness that we do not apply to others.
What happens in our minds after any conversation?
Dr. Sahar Talaat, a biodynamic psychotherapy consultant, explains the picture to Al Jazeera Net: “During any dialogue, you live on two levels at once: what you say to the outside, and an inner voice that comments on every word you say. This voice picks up every stumble, every silence, and every sentence that did not come out as you wanted.”
She continues: “Your brain is programmed to detect social threats, and your memory keeps an archive that no one else owns. You remember every moment in which you were embarrassed, for example, but others do not have this archive, and do not know those moments at all.”
All of this goes into what Sahar calls the “lights syndrome,” where we believe that others notice our small details with the same accuracy that we notice them, when in fact they are completely preoccupied with their inner voices, just as you are preoccupied with your voice.
Why do we lie to ourselves?
Lying to oneself is often not a conscious decision, but rather a psychological trick that occurs in the background. Sahar says there are 3 main reasons for this:
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Automatic focus on negatives (survival instinct)
Our brains have been programmed since ancient times to magnify risks and fears to ensure survival. Today, this mechanism has turned into a loud voice of inner criticism, to the point that you believe it and consider it an abstract truth, while it is mostly just an illusion amplified by your fears.
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Natural lack of information
You know in detail the worries and doubts that are going on in your mind, but you do not know what is going on in the minds of others. To fill this void, your mind begins to create scenarios and assumptions, and often chooses the worst scenario.
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Obsession with numbers (platform effect)
Social Media We are used to saying that “acceptance and love” are measured in numbers, likes, followers and views. When you go out into real life and do not find these numbers, you feel anxious because you can no longer bear the natural ambiguity of human feelings, which cannot be measured by a number.
Sahar explains that because of these three factors, we gradually lose our self-confidence, and we begin to make our social decisions, such as staying away from a person or thinking that someone hates us, based on illusions and internal conflicts that we created in our minds, not based on real reality.
How can we save our self-confidence?
Sahar says that self-confidence is not built by repeating to yourself that you are a wonderful person, but rather by realizing that the critical voice within you does not have all the information. “Don’t let a crush gap ruin a real relationship,” she adds. “You may waste a friendship because you listened to your inner voice and believed it, when nothing catastrophic actually happened.”
Getting out of this cycle begins by simply continuing to try, even when the inner voice tells you otherwise. This means that the problem is not only “how others see you,” but also “how each party imagines they are seen.”
How do we close the admiration gap and live in peace?
Dr. Sahar concludes her speech by saying: “Closing this gap does not mean stopping thinking, but rather resetting it.” It suggests 3 practical steps:
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Do not consider the negative feeling after the meeting as evidence of failure
Feeling uncomfortable after any conversation does not mean that the meeting was bad. Often this feeling is just natural “cognitive confusion,” resulting from over-examination of every detail.
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Training the mind to balance evaluation
Instead of focusing on one mistake or moment of silence, try to get the full picture of the conversation, including the moments that went smoothly, the questions the other party asked, or their interest in listening. These are indications that he was assimilating, even if he did not explicitly say so.
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Remember that others are experiencing the same gap
The person you think judged you negatively may be thinking about your impression of him after the encounter, and worrying in the same way. Realizing that this internal battle is shared reduces the severity of the judgments we make about ourselves.
The illusion of self-cruelty
The “admiration gap” is not a flaw in our personality as we think, but rather a flaw in the way our minds read social reality. It is an imaginary space between what actually happened and what we think happened.
When we understand that this gap is common to everyone, it becomes easier to be less hard on ourselves, and to realize that most conversations often end better than we imagined, even if our mind convinces us otherwise.
