Page 397 - The Social Animal

Liking, Loving, and Interpersonal Sensitivity 379

tary things to say about you. How do you suppose you might act the
next time you and I happened to meet? My hunch is that your
knowledge that I liked you would probably lead you to like me and
to act in ways that let me know that you liked me, too. You’d proba-
bly smile more, disclose more about yourself, and generally behave in
a warmer, more interested, more likable manner than if you hadn’t
already learned that I liked you. And what effect do you think your
actions would have on my behavior? Faced with your warm and lik-
able behavior, my fondness for you would undoubtedly grow, and I,
in turn, would convey my liking for you in ways that made me even
more likable to you.
But consider this: What if our mutual friend hadn’t exactly been
telling the truth? What if she had figured that you and I really would
like each other a great deal once we got to know each other and, to
get the ball rolling, had told you that I liked you, even though I had-
n’t ever expressed such feelings? What are the chances that her well-
intentioned plan would work? Well, if you and I were like the
participants in an experiment by Rebecca Curtis and Kim Miller,her
scheme would have worked like a charm! 48 These researchers led
some people to believe that another person liked them and led oth-
ers to believe that that same person disliked them. In a subsequent
interaction, those individuals who thought they were liked behaved
in more likable ways: They disclosed more about themselves, dis-
agreed less, and generally behaved in a warmer, more pleasant man-
ner toward the other person than did those individuals who thought
they were disliked. Moreover, the people who believed they were
liked were, in fact, subsequently liked by the other person, while
those who believed they were disliked were disliked by the other per-
son. In other words, the misinformation produced a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The behaviors of people who thought they were either
liked or disliked led to reciprocal behaviors from their partners
who—remember—had never actually expressed a liking or disliking
for the other. Our beliefs, whether right or wrong, play a potent role
in shaping reality.
And so, being liked indeed makes the heart grow fonder. Fur-
thermore, the greater our insecurity and self-doubt, the fonder we
will grow of the person who likes us. In a fascinating experiment by
Elaine Walster (Hatfield), female college students, while waiting to
receive the results of personality tests they had taken previously, were