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?

It turns out that the way we imagine we're being seen is often spectacularly wrong.

In our episode last week, we looked at how we spend a lot of time trying to read other people's minds

and how we often misinterpret their intentions.

Today, we continue our series, Mindreading 2.0.

We explore how social illusions shape our relationships at home and in the workplace.

There's just so many things that we, uh, 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.

How to see the world with greater clarity and walk with greater confidence this week on Hidden Brain.

When we talk to other people, we're 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?

Am I 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.

...