You have more influence than you think

Everyday people have more influence than they give themselves credit for.

• Marketing, advertising, and social media influencers have created an aggressive and flashy narrative around the influence that isn’t applicable to most people
• The psychology of influence is so much more than just Twitter likes, it’s about understanding your everyday interactions.
• So many “influence” books claim that you need to gain influence, and that you don’t have it already—but that’s simply not true. This false narrative only bolsters our biases and causes us to ignore our natural influences.

The Invisibility Cloak Illusion: Tendency to (incorrectly) believe that you notice people more than they notice you

We almost always underestimate how many people are paying attention to us

The Spotlight Effect: Tendency to overestimate how much others notice aspects of one’s appearance or behavior

The Barry Manilow T-Shirt Experiment: People don’t actively notice your flaws as much as you think

The Liking Gap: Tendency to underestimate how much a conversation partner enjoyed the conversation and how much they liked you afterwards.

We unfairly judge ourselves on the specifics of the conversation while we judge the other person on warmth and friendliness.

Based on the referenced study, the actual likeness is about 12% higher than the perception.

Audience Tuning Effect: Tendency to adjust our language and context based on who we are talking to

Saying is Believing Effect: When we take audience tuning too far, we begin to muddy our own reality, memory, and opinions

Thanks, but No Thanks Experiment: We overestimate how awkward it is to receive a compliment and we underestimate how good a compliment makes us feel

• The average person thinks they are less social than the average person
• Logically, this can’t be true, so there’s plenty of bias involved in FOMO.
• We have a tendency to compare ourselves to the maximum rather than the mean
• Basing your happiness on comparisons isn’t helpful because we are hopeless at setting reliable benchmarks for those comparisons.

• Engage more and worry less about getting things perfect.
• By trying to avoid negative interactions, you actively limit the opportunity for positive interactions.
• Interactions are usually less awkward than you think, and the results are almost always surprisingly comforting.