Review
Undersociality: miscalibrated social cognition can inhibit social connection

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Highlights

  • Connecting with others increases well-being, but people may be reluctant to reach out due to concerns about how a recipient might respond. Recent research suggests that these concerns may be misplaced: people tend to underestimate how positively others respond to social outreach.

  • Miscalibrated expectations can stem from three mechanisms: people evaluate their own actions in terms of competence but are evaluated by others in terms of warmth (differential construal), anticipate a broader range of outcomes than is actually probable (uncertain responsiveness), and receive less feedback when expectations encourage avoidance (asymmetric learning).

  • These mechanisms can lead people to undervalue several forms of sociality including conversations, expressions of appreciation, and acts of kindness, especially with less familiar others. People may therefore be less social than would be optimal for their well-being.

A person’s well-being depends heavily on forming and maintaining positive relationships, but people can be reluctant to connect in ways that would create or strengthen relationships. Emerging research suggests that miscalibrated social cognition may create psychological barriers to connecting with others more often. Specifically, people may underestimate how positively others will respond to their own sociality across a variety of social actions, including engaging in conversation, expressing appreciation, and performing acts of kindness. We suggest that these miscalibrated expectations are created and maintained by at least three mechanisms: differential construal, uncertain responsiveness, and asymmetric learning. Underestimating the positive consequences of social engagement could make people less social than would be optimal for both their own and others’ well-being.

Section snippets

Social approach versus social avoidance

Being social by reaching out and connecting with others tends to increase well-being, but people are sometimes reluctant to reach out because of concerns about how another person might respond. On an airplane, you might want to talk with a friendly-looking stranger next to you, but hesitate because they have donned headphones and seem disinterested. Once talking, you would like to have a meaningful conversation but worry that it could be awkward, and decide that sticking with idle chit-chat

Social expectations versus social experiences

Identifying why people experience social approach/avoidance conflicts is relatively easy. On the one hand, human beings are the most social primate species on the planet [1,2], possess a brain that is uniquely equipped for connecting with others [3], and have a neural reward system that leaves people feeling happier and healthier after connecting with others [4., 5., 6., 7., 8., 9., 10., 11.]. On the other hand, trying to connect is potentially risky. A well-intended attempt to talk with a

Conversation

People can readily communicate their thoughts and feelings through speech, making conversation a common way of connecting. However, conversations can unfold in a nearly infinite number of ways, yielding uncertainty from beginning to end, thereby creating a complex coordination problem [27]. Nobody wants to be rejected when reaching out, to feel stumped by what to discuss, or to leave their conversation partner with a negative impression. These concerns are especially likely to arise when

Mechanisms of miscalibration

Most adults have developed a sophisticated understanding of social interactions by learning from both their own and others’ experiences [26,48]. Nevertheless, accurately anticipating the outcome of social interaction remains challenging due to at least three mechanisms that we suggest can lead to systematically biased expectations: differential construal of sociality, uncertain responsiveness, and asymmetric learning. These mechanisms apply to the evaluation of a social act, to the anticipation

Concluding remarks

Decision-making often involves weighing competing goals and interests to determine the optimal course of action. Underestimating the positive outcomes of social interaction does not imply that people should reach out and connect with others whenever possible, any more than a doctor’s recommendation to exercise more would imply quitting one’s job to start jogging nonstop. Instead, the research reviewed here suggests that several features of social cognition can tip the balance of approach and

Declaration of interests

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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