"Miscalibration"

In a later study, participants engaged in both shallow and deep conversations, reporting their expectations and responses as in previous studies. And despite expecting to prefer the shallow conversation to the deep one, participants actually preferred the deep one, again significantly underestimating how much they would enjoy it. Participants were also better at anticipating how conversations with loved ones would go versus strangers, suggesting we “miscalibrate” how much people we don’t know are interested in our lives.