The liking gap online: People like us more than we think

Abstract

Generating perceptions of others is usually effortless, but determining how others perceive us is more demanding. People often underestimate how much others like them, a cognitive bias known as the liking gap. We examined how the communicative setting affected the liking gap in conversation. We conducted two experiments where participants interacted via text, audio, or video-chat, then switched to video-chat. In Experiment 1, participants worked on tangram tasks. After this, they completed a memory test of the tangrams seen. The liking gap was present across all settings with no significant differences between them. Recall of tangrams was best when switching from text-chat to video-chat. In Experiment 2, participants engaged in conversations about favorite movies and TV shows. After this, they recalled topics they discussed. Again, the liking gap persisted across settings with no significant differences. Recall of topics was best when switching from text-chat to video-chat and from audio-chat to video-chat.