When we’re in conversation with someone for the first time—in a meeting, over coffee, at a party or event—we’re taking in everything from facial expressions to the words they use to form an impression. We’re deciding if they’re kind, intelligent, humble, boring, funny, trustworthy. This process feels natural to us and happens immediately.

At the same time, there’s a parallel track running in our brains: How does the person we’re in conversation with perceive us? Do they think we’re kind, intelligent, humble, boring, funny, trustworthy? These “meta-perceptions” are the opposite of natural. And we often get them wrong.

As researchers Adam Mastroianni, Gus Cooney, Erica Boothby and Andrew Reece explain in a recent study called The Liking Gap in Groups and Teams, “People often feel uncertain about what their conversation partners really think of them, which can lead them to underestimate how much they are liked.”

This disconnect—between how people perceive us and how we believe they perceive us—is a phenomenon called the Liking Gap.

Here are a few interesting snippets I pulled from the research:

• Nearly 90 years of research on social perception has found that the impressions we form of people—and those they form of us—happen quickly and are long-lasting. So it’s no surprise we give extra brain space to these initial social interactions.
• However, as the researchers of this study note, “People seem uncharacteristically self-effacing prior to social interactions and disproportionately self-critical afterward.” We tend to be overly optimistic in other areas of our lives, but when it comes to meeting new people and decoding what they think of us, we set the bar low.
  
• The impact of the Liking Gap is far reaching. Because this disconnect affects how relationships are formed and nurtured, Mastroianni, Cooney, Boothby and Reece found teams were less likely to be open and honest with one another, to ask for help or to feel included and like they belonged. More broadly, the researchers discovered a correlation between the Liking Gap in organizations and decreased team effectiveness and job satisfaction.
  
• When friends work together, multiple studies have shown they outperform nonfriends in everything from problem-solving to idea generation. But the Liking Gap presents a roadblock to friendship when we assume the other person thinks not so highly of us.

This is all to say that if you’ve ever walked away from a conversation questioning whether a story you shared was too much, or whether she actually laughed at that joke or was being polite, or whether you possibly botched a presentation and now everyone thinks someone else deserves your job—consider the alternative. What if they liked you? What if they thought the joke was funny and the presentation was fine?

As the researchers write, “If only people knew how positively their teammates actually felt about them, they might communicate better, feel more included on their teams, and be happier overall with their jobs.”

If we can now assume people like us more after these initial interactions than we might have first believed, how would that change how we interact with them moving forward?