I get a team.
I hope you bloody terrific happy, whatever day it is for you. So one of the things that I am constantly doing, or regularly doing, I guess I should say, is trying to understand, trying to explain and try to understand myself as well, but trying to explain my research, my PhD research to people in a way that's really accessible and understandable and helpful and practical and something that
they can do something with. But it can be because of the language that's used in psychology and psychological research, and you know, this kind of academic jug and that people were out trying to explain what is really quite simple, fundamental things, but it can be explained in a way which all of a sudden is more complicated and more confusing than fucking ever. So I've been writing a bit of an article which I'm going to do something with.
I don't know what I'm going to do exactly actly what I'm going to do with it, but it's still a little bit of a work in progress. But today, twice twice today I've been asked, could I explain my research in simple terms? And I thought, why don't I do that? A lot of you know kind of what it's about. But and before I kind of read share the you know what I've written, I guess I want to explain the genesis for this work. So I'm, as
you know, I'm fascinated with human behavior. I'm fascinated with how people think and why they think the way they do. And I'm fascinated with how people see themselves in the world with kind of self awareness, with other awareness, understanding, having an insight into someone else's experience. What is this person's experience at the moment. We are in the same room at the same time, going through what seems to be the same thing, being exposed to the same stimuli.
Yet I am having one experience and they're having another.
What is that about? And where does that come from?
And how does that eventuate versus mine? So not better or worse, not good or bad, just different. And it's all about trying to lean into the different, trying to lean into the understanding the different, not judging it, not evaluating it, not labeling it, just trying to get your
head around it. And my very very firmly held belief based on more experience than research, but both experience and research is that if I can understand how other people think as a coach, as a mentor, as a teacher, as a writer, as an author, as a podcaster, or as an excise scientist, you know, as a communicator, if I can understand how other people think, not agree or align with, as I've said many times, but if I can understand how other people think, then i'stically increase my
chances of building you know, trust and connection and rapport and having meaningful, positive exchanges and interactions. And for that reason, I'm really passionate about sharing this information and this kind of you know, these insights with the world because you know, we look at the world through our lens, and sometimes we forget that the only person looking through our lens or our window or whatever fucking metaphor you want to use, the only person seeing the world the way that we
see the world is us. And because you only live in your head and I only live in my head, well it's of course you and I get shit wrong, of course, And of course I look at things through
the Craig window. And the Craig window is my thinking, my beliefs, my values, my ideas, my background, my programming, my story, is my fear, my anxiety, my personality, my genetics, my bullshit right, and awareness kind of starts to arise when I recognize all of those things that shape my reality and I go, oh, this is not the reality. This is just my reality. This is not the universal, objective,
big picture truth. This is just Craig's version of Craig's subjective experience of something bigger than him that he is giving a label to. Now, that objective subjective thing is omnipresent. It's always going on in every conversation, in every situation. There's the thing that's happening. There's you and me at a cafe, you and me sitting down in a conversation. What's the objective reality. Well, the objective reality is two humans in a cafe at a table talking, right, That's it.
It's a bit more than that, but that's essentially what's going on too humans in a conversation. People around us can go, that's two humans over there at a table on chairs having a chat.
Perfectly, that's what's going on.
But then there's the other bit, which is my version of what's going on, my experience at the table, my personal reality, my understanding of what is and what isn't in that moment. And then you on the other side, who you are not in my head, You are not in my experience, you are not in my subjective reality. You are not in the middle of the same story
that I'm in the middle of. And so connection and insight and harmony and all of these beautiful things that we want to happen on in its personal level begin to happen when we start to or seek to remember, seek first to understand, when we start to understand or seek to understand the person that we're engaged with presently. Now that's a person or a team that you're talking to, or your kids at dinner, or your spouse, your partner, your mum, your dad.
It's the moment that.
We try to look at whatever it is through their eyes. Is the moment that great shit starts to happen in terms of communication and problem solving and conflict resolution and building a healthier kind of interpersonal dynamic.
Right now, the next.
Level of this, you know, theory of mind, theory of mind understanding how others think. The next level on that, which I've spoken about a bit, but I'm going to do a deep dive today, is met a perception, which is having an insight into how other people see us, how other people see us. And then so my research is around that. It's you know in it. It's a bit more than what I'm going to share today, but I'm going to give you a really good, pretty comprehensive,
easy to understand snapshot. And not just because I want you to get my research or I think, you know, like it's important that everyone knows what I'm doing, not at all. I think it's actually important just because understanding others really matters, even if you don't agree with them
or even dare I say, like them. You know, there are going to be lots of people in your life over time, either close or not so close, so that at work or acquaintances or in your friendship circle or social circle that maybe you don't see eye to eye with, maybe sometimes you do, sometimes you don't, or there might be somebody who buys situation or circumstance is in your world that you really don't fucking like and that doesn't
make you bad or flawed, that makes you human. Is there anyone that I ever bump into every now and then or on a regular, semi regular basis that I don't really have warm, fuzzy feelings about of course, of course, and probably many people about me. So that's not good or bad, that's human, but being able to understand them and then being able to understand how other people see you. So this particular long winded, fucking introduction is into this idea of understanding what we are and who we are
for other people. So here we go. Do you ever walk out of a business meeting, a social encounter, or even just a quick chat with someone, a colleague perhaps, and immediately you start thinking about it in your head, like replaying it. You're thinking, what did they really think of me? Did I seem confident? Did I look like a dickhead? Am I likable? Did they think I'm competent? Incompetent? Did I overshare? Am I overthinking the shit out of
this now? And it's that internal second guessing, you know that, and it's really common and what you're doing in that moment when you're thinking about how was I for them? What kind of impression did I make?
Did they like me? Not like me?
And of course sometimes that can come from a place of fear, But really what I'm talking about today is more and yes, I'm riffing now. It is really more about curiosity and a real inclination to be able to understand how you are for them. But what you're doing in that moment, whether you know it or not, is you're forming what psychologists call metaperceptions. Metaperceptions, which is just a fancy term for your beliefs about how you think
other people see you. So I'll say that again. So metaperceptions is just a sciencey, academic y fancy word or term for your beliefs about how you think people see you.
And I'm going to tell you that many people are pretty fucking terrible at this.
It's like they think that people see them a certain way and they don't. And quite often it's a negative bias, as in they think that people think worse of them than is actually true. Sometimes it's a positive bias, where they think other people think they're shit hot in a particular way and they're not. But it's probably fair to say that while we can be quite accurate, we can also be wildly inaccurate, depending on you know, situation, circumstance, environment,
and the group that we're in. So it sounds academic, but it's not that complicated. It's basically your internal map of your social reflection. And these I guess mental maps, these metapas sceptions are actually really important because they influence your behavior and relationships and even how you see you. It's they're like like blueprints that you use to navigate
your social world at times. So the question is, for my research anyway, is how accurate are they, like, these metaperceptions that I have, these ideas, these beliefs that I have in my head about how other people see me. Are they wildly inaccurate or are they kind of on the money? Do we really know how other people see us? And so, as you can imagine, when it comes to humans,
the answer is not predictable. It's not a constant, it's not a straightforward yes or no. It's kind of complex, and it's that complexity that I want to unpack with you. So let's start with how researchers even measure this kind of insight. So imagine Sarah forms an impression of David, and then David forms a belief about what Sarah thinks of him. So David's belief that's his metaperception. The question
is does it match Sarah's actual impression? Is what Sarah really thinks about David aligned with what David thinks Sarah thinks of him. Oh Am, I getting confusing anyway. That overlap is what researchers called meta accuracy. So I think you are really reliable and really trustworthy. And if somebody said, what would you give insert your name right now, what would you give that person out of five for reliability and trustworthiness?
And I'd say I would give them.
I have no reason to not trust them, and they've always proven to be reliable, so I'm going to give them a five. Now, if you think that I would give you a five, then you've got very high metaaccuracy, right. So it's the gap or lack of gap, between how I see you and how you think I see you. Conversely, if you have a negative bias, you might think that I would score you a two because I don't think so.
I actually think you're a five, But you think I would perceive you as a two, then your meta accuracy in this particular example is not great at all. In fact, it's bad, and you have what we would call a negative bias. It's usually measured statistically as a correlation better the alignment between what someone thinks about you and what they actually do think. Then, of course, the more meta
accurate you are. So my research was really around so much around trying to understand who is more or less accurate, What are the variables and influencers around that can we measure it? A whole bunch of interesting stuff. But it doesn't stop there. So there's also another thing called metaperceptual bias, which is all about whether people tend to consistently overestimate or underestimate how they're seen as I said to you,
positive or negative. For example, do you tend to believe that people see you as more competent than they actually do, Well, that's a positive bias.
So here's something interesting from the research.
Metaperceptions are often both somewhat accurate and slightly positively biased, especially when it comes to personality traits. You can know the relative order of how people see you, say, more extroverted than Mark, but less than Jess. So somebody might go, if we've got you and Mark and Jess, you are more extroverted than Mark, but you are less extroverted than Jess,
while still slightly overestimating the overall impression you make. The research also makes a distinction between knowing how one specific person sees you and knowing your general reputation across the group. So I'll say that again. So the research that we looked at, it makes a clear distinction between knowing how an individual one person sally for example, sees you in contrast to knowing how a group of people see you.
So you might be a basketball coach and you know that this individual player really has an issue with you, They maybe find you a bit intimidating, right, So you know that that's one specific we call that diadic that's one specific relationship. But when you zoom out to the totality of the group, your twelve players, you know that the general reputation or perception of the group is more positive than that. It's the rest are not so intimidated. And that one on one kind of one to one
person accuracy. We call that diatic metaaccuracy or DMA.
And the second one.
Where we're referring to a bigger a collection of people or a group or a team, that's called generalized metaaccuracy or GMA.
So how accurate are we? Well?
In general, people have a reasonably good sense of their reputation or how they're seen by a group their GMA generalized metaaccuracy for things like personality traits.
So there's a thing in.
A framework in psychology called the Big Five, which is five different dimensions of personality or five different personality traits. So they are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. People also tend to have insight into how they're seen in terms of leadership, abilities, competence, or attractiveness, and all of these measures, all of these kind of individual traits or
factors are used when assessing meta accuracy. And so say, for example, with the Big five, we might pick extraversion, and I would get five people who know me well, and I've got to rate myself one to five on a like art scale. Let's say one seven on a like art scale, one to seven, one being very very low on the extraversion scale, number seven being a complete freak of an extrovert.
Seven.
I see myself as a seven, and the other five all see me as a seven. So what we're doing is where we're using extra version as the trait or as the factor to assess meta accuracy in this particular instance. So it's specific to in the measurement. It's always specific to something a trait, might be a skill, it might
be a personality factor. So it's not generally general, so we don't go, oh, yeah, she is a seven, well seven on what because I might be On one scale, I might be I might rate highly, and on another scale, I rate poorly, depending on the measure, of course, and this kind of insight into your general vibe kind of holds up across all sorts of social settings, from first impression like when you first meet someone, to online stuff,
to intimate relationships, personal relationships people that you've known for a whole bunch of years.
But here's where it gets weird.
Right when it comes to the more affective stuff like how much people like you or your popularity, our insight tends to be worse.
We seem to be more inaccurate.
You might not really know whether people find you likable or not. And that's because those impressions are often more personal and inconsistent, because, for example, one person might love and I truly know this you're weird shitty humor, and someone else will find it completely inappropriate and off putting, and so there's less consensus.
So it's much harder in that instance.
To guess the average so like I know with people they absolutely love what I write, I might put something on social media and literally on the same post, there will be a group of people who love it, who give it likes and loves and comments and thumbs up and all of that positive reinforcement. But there might also be usually a smaller group, thankfully, but a smaller group.
Who go, you're a fucking idiot, this is bullshit.
So trying to ascertain, you know, the global kind of score is hard because it's going to vary across domains and dimensions and groups of people. Interestingly, while we often underestimate how people like us, remember that's a negative bias. In some situations, like first impressions, we might overestimate it. So, as I said, context situation really matters. So now when it comes to knowing how an individual sees us, like one specific person, remember DMA dietic meta accuracy, it's a
bit trickier. So for personality traits, people tend to be less accurate than.
They are with general reputation.
But for liking, like on the likability scale, how much do they like me, it's actually the opposite.
We're better at knowing whether a.
Specific person likes us than we are at estimating our general popularity with a group. So, in other words, we seem to be pretty good at knowing if an individual.
Likes us, quite accurate at that.
But when we zoom out to a whole group, does the group like me? Or am I popular? Am I well thought of? In the context of this group, we are less accurate less accurate.
And so why is that?
Well, we don't exactly know, but it could be because liking is.
How much we like someone.
The likability is more about the chemistry between two people. It's more personal, and that makes the cues more noticeable and potentially easier to interpret, even if we can't read the room at large. So all right, let's talk about
where these meta perceptions come from. So you might think the answer is obvious feedback, but as I've said many times before, direct, honest, real feedback is surprisingly rare in our day to day life because people tend to say what they think people want them to say, and truthfully, you know, like when people ask for feedback, often they
don't want feedback. They want praise, they want accolades, they want endorsement, they want to cuddle, they want to pad on the back and everyone you know, wants feedback till they get feed back they don't want. So people are often going to sugarcoat, they're going to avoid conflict or say not much at all. And even when the feedback is there, sometimes we miss it, or we misinterpret it,
or we filter it through our own biases. So a big part of metaperception actually comes from observing our own behavior. And the logic is if I noticed myself talking a lot, others probably saw that to and think I'm extroverted. And that can be valuable, especially for visible traits. But the problem is we often judge ourselves based on intentions, not just what.
Others actually saw.
So there's something called the illusion of transparency, and it just means we assume that others can see our internal states, but they usually can't. And as I've said many times, for probably ten times on this show, there's a thing called, you know, the false consensus effect, and that being this kind of idea that we think that other people think
like us. And this is really the it's almost the starting point for leaning into that curiosity around you know, metacognition why we think the way we do, and theory of mind, why we you know, understanding how others think and what we're talking about right now, which is metaperception and meta accuracy. And I think we're better to operate on the assumption generally that however I see this thing in front of me, is not how the person next to me sees it. That's more likely to be true
than yes, they think exactly like me. But a huge influence on metaperceptions is just our self view.
So we tend to, or we.
Can tend to assume that other people see us the way that we see us, and that helps when your self use and others' perceptions aligned. But when they don't like when you think you're hilarious and they don't think you're hilarious, well then we've got an accuracy problem. And that accuracy problem, that gap between what you think you are for them and what you actually are for them, is going to create or potentially going to create, all
kinds of interpersonal problems. And I think it's more guys that think they're hilarious than girls guys that think they're hilarious and aren't anyway. And when it comes to all this stuff, we also use shortcuts, or we call them heuristics. One is reciprocity. If I like you, I assume you like me, and that can help things like liking, but not so much for personality traits.
Another is.
Normative knowledge, which is assuming people see you like they see the average per and that kind of gives us an okay starting point, but we can do better. And one thing that really doesn't work in this space. One
thing that tends to backfires is stereotypes. So when we assume that someone sees you a certain way or they perceive you in a certain light because of you know, stereotypical things like your age, or your gender, or your background or stuff that might not reflect actually who you are, we tend to be more inaccurate.
And so.
You know, even me, as a sixty one year old dude, sixty one year old white male traversing suburbia, there are understandably I'm not mad about this, I'm not upset about this, but because I look the way that I look, and I fill in the blank all of the things that I appear to be, so there are stereotypical assumptions made about I am based on my appearance. Now, in an
ideal world, that wouldn't happen. We don't live in that ideal world, so we all assume things, you and me both, And research tells us that these meta stereotypes tend to reduce accuracy, No surprise there, especially in diadic situations or one on one situations.
So what else.
Makes somebody better or worse at understanding how they're seen? So researchers refer to a thing called the Realistic Accuracy Model or RAM. RAM It says that meta accuracy depends on four things. So let's whip through those. So one is the information available more cues, more context, more interaction means you've got more data, more information to work with.
And because you've got more context, more cues, interaction insight, you're probably going to make more accurate judgments about how people are than say, a stranger a stranger, so you'll make more accurate assessments with people you know well. In other words, so close friends. Number two the trait being judged, So observable traits like extraversion are generally easier to track than internal. For one of better terms, internal traits like anxiety.
Number three the target. So the truth is that some people are just easier to read, they're more expressive, they're more consistent with how they are, and they're more they're more vulnerable, they're more transparent, they're more open, and they're more you know, this is not the right term, but they're more themselves. So behind closed doors and in front of the door, they're kind of the same persons. So it gives us a better chance of being able to
truly understand the person that's in front of us. And number four is the judge. And the judge is not the court judge, but the judge in this particular conversation. Is you the meta perceiver in other words, the one who's doing the judging the perceiving.
Some people are just better at this stuff.
Some people have better self awareness, better memories, stronger social skills, I guess, a bigger cognitive bandwidth to understand and discern and process all of these social subtleties, all of these cues, all of these things that are happening. I used to be terrible at this, but well, I would say probably tip or maybe not terrible, but maybe typical. And since you know, trying to do my research, but also understanding before I even started my PhD, how much information there
is that's not coming out of someone's mouth. So I'm fascinated by what they're telling me when they're not telling me anything. So when their lips are not moving, or even when their lips are moving, what is the actual information? What is the beyond the words, beyond the verbal audible kind of stuff, what's the real message? Because sometimes the thing that they're not telling you is more insightful, powerful and valuable than the thing that they are telling you.
So some people are just going to have better self awareness, memory, stronger social skills, and like I said, cognitive bandwidth. And conversely, things like social anxiety or certain personality disorders for some people really reduce their accuracy, either through biased filtering or behavior. Is that illicit negative feedback that gets misread or ignored, And all of these factors interact. So you might be great at reading your partner but terrible with your boss.
You might accurately engauge how you're seen in terms of by others in terms of competence, but not for warmth.
So what's the takeaway?
So we do have some real insight into how others see us, especially when it comes to stable observable traits, but that insight comes with a dose of bias. Quite often a positive bias for personality. We think we're seen a little better than we are, and sometimes a negative one when it comes to things like things like liking. That is, we don't think we're liked as much as we actually are liked.
But again, context matters, so that can change.
And weirdly, it's easier to know who specifically likes you than it is to know how generally well liked you are or how popular you are in terms of a group.
So here's the final thought. Is perfect insight really the goal for us to absolutely, categorically, unequivocally, accurately understand how others see us know there's evidence suggesting that a slight positive illusion, like believing your partner sees you a little more positive than they positively than they actually do, can actually strengthen relationships.
So maybe a.
Tiny glow a soft filter isn't a bug in the system.
Maybe it's a feature something to think about. See next time, team