The Social Habit That's Quietly Making You Less Likable

your anxiety is causing you to signal “it’s all about me”

A few years ago, still new to my city and working to make new friends, I took a big risk - I asked someone I had met in volunteer meetings to have a friend hang. My acquaintance was always insightful, funny, and generous in meetings. We both usually remembered the snacks (oreos, obviously) and laughed at the same things. Heck, we even agreed about the direction our volunteer work should go in!

And the predictable thing happened. Our schedules were so difficult to coordinate, that we had to pick a time months later. Then we had to reschedule it. We picked something that was new to us but that we were both excited about - an evening at a trampoline park.

This hang took so long to set up, and I had a lot riding on it and was pretty anxious. I did feel excited, but when the day came I found myself really thinking about  socks I picked out. Were the shorts right? What about shoes? What will I talk about? Am I weird?

Now the hang wasn’t perfect for a few reasons, including that the trampoline park wasn’t really a free flowing space. We had to wait in lines, and the specific activities like jedi-style fighting with foam boppers had long lines. While we both like kids, it was difficult to share such a physical activity and crowded spacewith children from school age to high school - needing to be careful in our movements so we didn’t, you know, cannonball onto an eight year old.

I found myself commenting on everything I was doing, often in self-deprecating ways. I apologized a lot for whatever inconveniences I imagined my acquaintance was experiencing. I was saying things not to different than “I’m so sorry we’re in line, again!” and “oh man, I was so totally awkward when we were doing the rock wall/trampoline combo”.

We never hung out one on one again. Eventually, the project we worked on ended, and the silence always felt pronounced.

So what was happening?

I was making myself a lot less likable by being very pre-occupied with how I was coming across, even extending to managing the environment around us. 

I didn’t ask her about her experience or interests, I didn’t find out if she her childhood dream was being a competitive trampoline acrobat, or even really find out if she was bothered by any of the millions of flawed (as I saw it then) details.

I was unintentionally signaling, “this is all about me right now.” And that was making me less likable.

Now, I don’t beat myself up (too much) about this anymore. But this a really common pitfall of building new connections - both platonic and romantic - and I want lay out a few of the problems, and, of course, some solutions!

The spotlight effect

Look, we are each the center of our own worlds. Small faux pas, habits, or quirks feel like neon bedecked billboards along the night time highway in Nebraska. Literally last week, I started to panic and over-apologize while putting on my shoes before going to the bike shop with my roommate. 

My heart was pounding, my mind racing, fumbling over my shoe laces. 

He, of course, hadn’t even noticed a time lag and we had a chuckle about it.

The spotlight effect is well documented and a little intuitive. Basically, it’s the tendency to feel like we are the constant focal point of others’ attention. In a particularly goofy example, a 2000 study had subjects put on a Barry Manilow tshirt - a pretty embarrassing shirt for a college student to wear in 2000 - before entering a room and predict who would notice. The results were clear: the “average estimate [of how many people would notice] made by the targets was exactly twice as high” as how many people noticed the shirt in reality.

It doesn’t mean we’re all like self absorbed automatons, it’s just that there is a lot going on around us and in us most of the time. We aren’t keying into the fine details of others’ behavior all the time.

Antidotes

Counteract the spotlight effect by leaning into curiosity about your companion’s experience.

• “What is moving you this week?”

• “What’s the soundtrack for this tapas bar?”

• “How did you pick your outfit? It looks great on you!”

You can also use self-monitoring as a strategy to better understand your own behavior so you can feel more confident in how you actually show up day-to-day. Personally, since I struggle with “reading the room” sometimes (in combination with the spotlight effect!) I can lose touch with what I’m actually putting out there.

Essentially, keep a journal of

• What thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (or words you say!) come up in specific situations - these could be columns in a table, even

• Regular occurrences - it could be 1-3 times per day at specific times, or it could be organized by type of interaction (e.g., morning commute, friend hang, work meeting). These would the rows on your chart

Don’t overdo it - you shouldn’t log everything you experience every 15 minutes. But use the data you generate to reflect on your patterns. 

Then, when you’re actually hanging out with your friends and partners/dates, shift your focus to experience you are actually having. If you start to feel nervous, come back to what’s right in front of you - colors, shapes,  sounds, smells. 

With these tools, you can be better equipped to show up as your full self, and not unwittingly send the message that the interaction is about you. Because it’s about both of you, and what you create together by connecting!