In this article, we will discuss the psychology of interpersonal relationships.
What do you say when you are asked if you have made a good impression on someone you have just met? What do you say?
I would say that they probably didn't make a very good impression on me.
How many people would say, "No, no, no, I succeeded in making them like me very much, and I did it well"?
In psychology, when describing impressions, the terms "halo effect" and "stereotype" are well known, which means that if you have one good impression of a person, you will think that he is a good person in other aspects as well.
If you belong to a group of people who are excellent, you may think that they are great people even if you don't know them well.
These work on the psychological side of people, and some people use them skillfully because they have been proven to do so.
But are they making a good impression? But are they making a good impression?
Here are the results of a paper that investigates this question.
Impressions" as inferred from experimental results
In one study, it was found that people tend to underestimate how much others like them.
This is a phenomenon known as the "negative deviation effect" in the process of estimating the impressions we leave on others, and we now have evidence of this effect.One study looked at whether there was a negative deviance effect during communication.
The results proved that negative deviance effects existed, as measured by the communication between the participants and their conversation partners.
Another study supported the results of the aforementioned study, showing that even when people had clear preferences for others, the negative deviation effect still existed.
The second study investigated the reasons for the negative deviation effect.
This study tested whether the effect was caused by one's own negative thoughts occurring during the conversation.
However, the results revealed that the effect existed even in the absence of negative thoughts in communication, indicating that there were other reasons for the effect.
Thus, another study found that the negative deviation effect was influenced by the degree of psychological defensiveness towards others in the initial communication.
The participants had two types of communication (verbal and nonverbal) and different degrees of psychological defensiveness (high and low).
The researchers looked at the participants' estimated impressions of themselves to others to see if they changed with different psychological defenses.
The results suggested that there was an interaction between the type of evaluation and the degree of psychological defense, and that the degree of a person's psychological defense was related to the magnitude of the negative deviation effect.
Therefore, the point at which the negative deviation effect can be felt is when the psychological defense against strangers, which is triggered when meeting strangers for the first time, is occurring.
The results of these studies are a new contribution to research in the field of impression formation, and previous research has led to publicly acknowledged studies of dominance effects, halo effects, and stereotypes.
Until now, research on impression formation has focused primarily on individuals' initial impressions and impression renewal, with little discussion of the initial interaction of impressions with each other.
The results of the current study indicate that the psychological defense caused by a person's initial communication is the main reason for the negative deviance effect; the stronger the psychological defense, the stronger the effect, as people underestimate how much others like them.
However, repeated communication will gradually reduce the psychological defenses, and the degree of negative deviance will gradually decrease.
Li J, Zhong Z, Mo L. Negative Deviation Effect in Interpersonal Communication: Why People Underestimate the Positivity of Impression They Left on Others Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2020;13:733-745. published 2020 Sep 14. doi:10.2147/PRBM.S258057
Conclusion
People live their lives being very concerned about how others see them.
From general life to work, schoolwork, community, etc., we will frequently worry about whether we are liked or not.The psychological effects that have been mentioned before focus on how good an impression we make of ourselves, but this study focuses on the inner aspects of ourselves.
After all, even if you make a good impression, you don't know what the other person thinks of you, so the interpersonal anxiety remained.
As a result, I also found out that the negative deviation effect I had on myself would decrease as I communicated with the other person over and over again.
After the interaction, it's a different story, but I thought it was useful knowledge that explained one of the concerns that arises when talking about first impressions.
