Maybe don't say “maybe”: How and why invitees fail to realize that they should not respond to invitations with a “maybe”

Abstract

People often invite others to join them for social activities. Upon receiving an invitation, an invitee might respond to the inviter with a tentative “maybe.” We examine whether invitees accurately gauge an inviter's preferences when they contemplate replying with a “maybe” (vs. “no”). Across six experiments (five preregistered), we show that invitees often overestimate the likelihood that an inviter would prefer a “maybe” response over a direct “no,” because they underestimate how much more disrespected an inviter feels upon receiving a “maybe” (vs. “no”). We also demonstrate that these mispredictions arise, in part, due to motivated reasoning. Invitees think that replying with a “maybe” (vs. “no”) aligns with what an inviter would find desirable, in part because a “maybe” response serves the invitee's own interests more than a direct decline does. Finally, we illustrate that partly due to their flawed predictions, invitees are more likely to respond with a “maybe” (vs. “no”) even though an inviter would prefer greater decisiveness. The findings contribute to the emerging social psychology of invitations.