Meanwhile . .

Other People Like Us More Than We Think - Are you the type to lie in bed at night dwelling on conversations from the day — perhaps reliving an awkward moment at a dinner party or wondering if you said the right thing during a Zoom call with a colleague? It’s a common practice, and unfortunately, it can lead to the common conclusion that people don’t like us as much as we hope they do. Thanks to robust research on the subject, however, we can happily report that this interpretation is — in most cases — likely incorrect. 

That’s according to a team of psychologists who spent nearly a decade investigating the accuracy of individuals’ beliefs about the way others perceive them, specifically looking at whether humans are correct in their predictions of whether or not someone else likes them.  

After tens of thousands of observations, the researchers determined that not only do we underestimate how much people like us, but also that this bias has important implications for how we work together.

Writing about their findings in Harvard Business Review, Erica Boothby, Gus Cooney, Adam Mastroianni, Andrew Reece, and Gillian Sandstrom explain that they conducted a series of studies in the U.K and the U.S. during which participants spoke with people they had never met before. More

The State Department is expanding access to its online passport renewal pilot, and it takes only 15 minutes to submit an application.