Undersociality: miscalibrated social cognition can inhibit social connection

Epley, Nicholas; Kardas, Michael; Zhao, Xuan; Atir, Stav; Schroeder, Juliana

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2022.02.007

Cited by 36 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…Research on social support reviewed earlier indicated that people expected a more positive response to their expression of support from a close other than from a more distant other, even though the expression was valued equally positively by recipients (Dungan et al, in press). Similar results emerged when people anticipated the outcome of a relatively deep conversation, expecting a more positive experience with a close other than with a stranger even though the actual experience was similarly positive (Kardas et al, 2022). Strangers can become friends, after all, through conversation.…”

Section: Open Questionsmentioning

confidence: 59%

“…Although the capacity to make inferences about another's mind is highly useful for understanding a person's behavior in the present and anticipating it in the future, these inferences are far from perfect and prone to systematic biases that can create Undersociality,5 mistaken inferences about another's mental state and corresponding behavior (Epley & Eyal, 2019). In the context of social interaction, converging evidence now suggests that people may systematically underestimate how positively others will respond when they try to reach out and engage with another person in a positive way, at least partly due to differences in perspective between two people in an interaction (see "Why is Sociality Undervalued" below for more detail; see also Epley, Kardas, et al, 2022). Misunderstanding another's mind could then create a misplaced barrier to reaching out and engaging positively with others more often in daily life.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Undersociality is unwise

Kumar

Epley

2022

J Consum Psychol

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Wise decisions are often guided by an accurate understanding of the expected values of different possible choices. In social contexts, wisdom comes from understanding how others are likely to respond to one's actions, enabling people to make choices that maximize both their own and others' outcomes. Our research suggests that miscalibrated social cognition may create a systematic barrier to wiser decisions in social life. From expressing appreciation to offering support to performing acts of kindness, this program of research indicates that decisions to engage with others are driven by how people expect a recipient to respond, but that people consistently underestimate how positively others will respond to their other-oriented actions.Because connecting with others consistently increases people's own wellbeing, miscalibrated social cognition may lead to undersociality: being overly reluctant to reach out and connect with others. Miscalibrated expectations about social engagement can create markets for products that help people overcome these barriers in order to consume their time, money, and effort more wisely.

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Section: Open Questionsmentioning

confidence: 59%

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confidence: 99%

Undersociality is unwise

Kumar

Epley

2022

J Consum Psychol

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“…One barrier to calibrated expectations may come from the sheer diversity of knowledge that could be learned, which makes generalizing from one conversation to another especially challenging. Another barrier is that social beliefs can be self-fulfilling, such that people find out what they can learn only from the conversations they actually have but don't find out how much they could have learned from the conversations they avoided (19). If people primarily engage in conversations with the people they expect to learn lot to from, then they will fail to learn how much they could have learned from someone they deemed uninteresting or uninformative.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Talking With Strangers is Surprisingly Informative

Atir¹,

Wald²,

Epley³

2022

Preprint

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A meaningful amount of people’s knowledge comes from their conversations with others. The amount people expect to learn predicts their interest in having a conversation (Pretests 1-2), suggesting that the presumed information value of conversations guides decisions of whom to talk with. The results of seven experiments, however, suggest that people may systematically underestimate the informational benefit of conversation, creating a barrier to talking with—and hence learning from—others more often in daily life. Participants who were asked to talk with another person expected to learn significantly less from the conversation than they actually reported learning afterwards, regardless of whether they had conversation prompts or not and whether they had the goal to learn or not (Exp 1-2). Undervaluing conversation does not stem from having systematically poor opinions of how much others know (Exp 3), but is instead related to the inherent uncertainty involved in conversation itself. Consequently, people underestimate learning to a lesser extent when uncertainty is reduced, as in a nonsocial context (surfing the web, Exp 4), when talking to an acquainted conversation partner (Exp 5), and after knowing the content of the conversation (Exp 6). Underestimating learning in conversation is distinct from underestimating other positive qualities in conversation, such as enjoyment (Exp 7). Misunderstanding how much can be learned in conversation could keep people from learning more from others in daily life.

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“…Recent work has also found that people underestimate how interested others are in connecting through conversation (Epley & Schroeder, 2014; Kardas et al, 2022; Schroeder et al, 2021), and even underestimate how positively others will judge them after a conversation (Boothby et al, 2018), potentially discouraging people from reaching out and connecting with others they might want to connect with more often in daily life. In this way, being reluctant to engage in a prosocial action may not simply reflect a lack of approach-oriented (prosocial) motivation to engage with others, but rather can reflect an avoidance-oriented barrier based on concerns about how positively another person might respond (Epley, Kardas, et al, 2022). In cases of approach/avoidance conflicts, underestimating how positively others might respond to a prosocial act could lead to missed opportunities for engaging with others that could increase one’s own and others’ well-being.…”

Section: Prosociality and Well-beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients.

Kumar¹,

Epley²

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Performing random acts of kindness increases happiness in both givers and receivers, but we find that givers systematically undervalue their positive impact on recipients. In both field and laboratory settings (Experiments 1a through 2b), those performing an act of kindness reported how positive they expected recipients would feel and recipients reported how they actually felt. From giving away a cup of hot chocolate in a park to giving away a gift in the lab, those performing a random act of kindness consistently underestimated how positive their recipients would feel, thinking their act was of less value than recipients perceived it to be. Givers' miscalibrated expectations are driven partly by an egocentric bias in evaluations of the act itself (Experiment 3). Whereas recipients' positive reactions are enhanced by the warmth conveyed in a kind act, givers' expectations are relatively insensitive to the warmth conveyed in their action. Underestimating the positive impact of a random act of kindness also leads givers to underestimate the behavioral consequences their prosociality will produce in recipients through indirect reciprocity (Experiment 4). We suggest that givers' miscalibrated expectations matter because they can create a barrier to engaging in prosocial actions more often in everyday life (Experiments 5a and 5b), which may result in people missing out on opportunities to enhance both their own and others' well-being.

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Undersociality: miscalibrated social cognition can inhibit social connection

Cited by 36 publications

References 90 publications

Undersociality is unwise

Undersociality is unwise

Talking With Strangers is Surprisingly Informative

A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients.

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