They Loved You More Than They Thought

David Robson dismantles a measurable illusion that sabotages your social life: the liking gap, the systematic error that makes you rate yourself lower than others actually rate you. Drawing on Erica Boothby's 2018 Psychological Science study, where strangers consistently underestimated how much their conversation partners enjoyed them, Robson traces this distortion from five-minute chats to university roommates who needed eight months to trust they were liked. The harshest judge in any room is the one who never bought a ticket.

You'll learn:

- Why shyer people carry the widest liking gaps

- How the forty-eight-hour rule defuses unanswered-text spirals

- What an evidence journal reveals about your biased memory