This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Many of us spend enormous amounts of time asking ourselves what other people think of us.

Do they notice our flaws? Are they mocking us behind our backs? Do they think we're boring?

This sort of rumination can be exhausting, anxiety provoking, and above all else it's often spectacularly wrong.

There's just so many things that we mistakes that we fall into these sort of

social traps that lead us to be a lot more pessimistic about

our social lives than kind of reality warrants.

Today on the show, why are assessments of how people see us can be so off base and how these incorrect

impressions shape our relationships at home and in the workplace. How to see the

world with greater clarity and walk with greater confidence, this week on Hidden

Brain. When we talk talk to other people, we are often trying to figure them out, but we also try to guess what the other person thinks of us.

We worry, how am I coming across? Are my flaws on

prominent display? Or does this person think I'm cool? Most of us think we are good

judges of our social interactions, that we can tell if other people like us.

But new research suggests this is often not the case.

Our perceptions of our social interactions are often distorted. At the University of Pennsylvania's

Wharton School, psychologist Erica Boothby studies these distortions and what we can do about them.

Erica Boothby, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Thanks for having me.

I'd like to take you back to the start of your interest in this topic, Erica.

You were in grad school and sitting at a cafe with a

friend and you'd also plan to meet a potential collaborator at the cafe. She

showed up and you went over and started chatting. What happened next?

...