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Key points
- Research suggests that people tend to underestimate the extent to which other people have negative emotional experiences.
- Underestimating can be explained in part by people’s tendency to suppress negative emotions, making it harder for others to perceive them.
- Underestimating increases loneliness and rumination and reduces life satisfaction.
- Being authentic about what one is going through can increase closeness with others—and help them feel less alone, too.
Have you ever scrolled through social media in an effort to lift your spirits, only to find yourself feeling worse? One reason for this is that social media tends to paint an unrealistically rosy picture of other people’s lives, which can make ours seem inadequate in comparison. But this discrepancy can also occur offline with people we know well, leading us to underestimate their hardships and feel more alone in ours.
Negative Experiences Are More Common Than We Think
In one study, a group of college students estimated what percentage of their peers had gone through a series of positive and negative emotional experiences in the past two weeks. They also reported whether they had themselves experienced them. Then the researchers compared their estimates with the actual number reported by their peers.
The negative experiences included having a distressing fight, missing distant family and friends, feeling overwhelmed by work, being rejected, receiving a bad grade, and worrying about health. The positive ones included going to a fun party, talking to distant family and friends, receiving a high grade, playing sports, going out with friends, and having a great meal.
The results revealed that participants assumed negative experiences were significantly less common than they actually were. For example, they estimated that only around half of their peers felt homesick recently, when in fact over 80 percent reported those feelings. The other negative experiences were also underestimated by at least 10 percent. In other words, many people believed that the hard things they were going through were less common than they actually were. The positive experiences, by contrast, were more likely to be overestimated, at least in the case of going out with friends, attending a party, and playing sports.
In another study by the same researchers, college students rated how much they experienced a range of positive and negative emotions each week during their first semester of college. Then they nominated close friends, roommates, and romantic partners to privately rate their perceptions of the participant’s emotions. Again, people tended to underestimate their peers’ negative emotions and overestimate their positive emotions. For example, they saw their peers as less anxious, sad, and lonely—and more confident and happy—than their peers actually felt.
Why Do We Have a Skewed Perception of Others’ Experiences?
One explanation is that people are less likely to express negative emotions in social situations, making it harder for others to accurately perceive their true feelings. To test this hypothesis, the researchers asked participants how much they outwardly expressed (versus suppressed) the emotions they experienced. They found that most participants suppressed their emotions to some extent, especially negative ones. The greater the discrepancy between what they felt and what they showed, the less accurate their peers were.
It’s understandable that someone might suppress a negative emotion if they don’t believe the experience is shared by others—they might fear that expressing it could be embarrassing or stigmatizing. But suppressing emotions reinforces the misperception that gave rise to the impulse to suppress in the first place, because it communicates to others that their own private struggles may be less common, and less acceptable to share.
Another explanation for our skewed perceptions is that we tend to over-attribute other people’s behavior to internal traits, which psychologists call the fundamental attribution error. For example, we might interpret a colleague’s cheerful demeanor at work as reflecting a genuinely cheerful disposition, but more easily recognize that our own cheeriness is driven by our desire to behave in a socially appropriate way in a workplace setting.
How Do Misperceptions Impact Mental Health?
The same bias can occur when we consume social media—we know intellectually that people often present a “filtered” self-image, but our brains still cling to the idea that other people’s presentations are more authentic than our own. The combination of the knowledge that we ourselves may be presenting a skewed reality with the assumption that others are not can be especially harmful. As one reporter put it when describing a college student’s mental health struggle, “She seemed acutely aware that the life she was curating online was distinctly different from the one she was actually living. Yet she could not apply that same logic when she looked at the projected lives of others.”
In a third study, the researchers examined some of the mental health consequences of misperceiving others’ emotions. They found that the more participants underestimated others’ negative experiences, the more isolated and lonely they felt as a result. They also reported brooding more over their problems and feeling less satisfied with their lives.
These associations may go in both directions. That is, misperceptions can make people feel bad, but feeling bad may also make people more likely to misperceive others’ emotions, which may then reinforce their negative state of mind.
Is There a Way Out of This Vicious Cycle?
One approach to breaking the cycle is to be the first to speak out and share your authentic feelings, in hopes that this will help others feel more comfortable doing the same. This involves taking a risk—others may remain silent, or there may be social or professional costs. But we may be surprised by the number of situations where being authentic ends up being worth the risk. Sometimes all it takes is just one voice to challenge the illusion that everyone is having an easier time.
Whether it’s the transition to college, or to parenting, or to losing a loved one, rest assured that you are probably not the only one thinking, “This is so much harder than I thought it would be.” Believing that there’s something wrong with you for struggling only makes it that much harder. Instead, being real about what you’re going through can bring you closer to others and help them feel less alone too.
Facebook image: Odua Images/Shutterstock
References
Jordan, A. H., Monin, B., Dweck, C. S., Lovett, B. J., John, O. P., & Gross, J. J. (2011). Misery has more company than people think: Underestimating the prevalence of others’ negative emotions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(1), 120–135.
