A while ago, I was listening to a podcast called Hidden Brain on NPR (if you haven’t listened to any episode yet, I’d check it out it’s so cool).
Anyway, one of the episodes is all about something called the Liking Gap.
This is a term coined by psychologist Erica Boothby.
Basically, all the research that she and her team conducted showed that most of the time, there is a huge liking gap based on how much we think a stranger likes us and how much they actually like us. This holds true in friendships as well 🙂
If you want to listen to the episode and learn more, here is the link.