How to Get Others to See You the Way You See Yourself

These people seem to express themselves in ways that allow others to perceive them more accurately. Psychologists refer to this as being more or less “judgeable,” or as personality expert David Funder calls it, being a “good target.” What actually makes someone more judgeable? Funder has argued that in order for people to be accurate in their assessments of someone else, four things need to happen. The target must (1) make information available and (2) make sure that information is relevant. Then, the perceiver must (3) detect, or pay attention to that information and (4) use it correctly.

Translation for dummies like me: Do good self-PR. Get yo brand up. You have to open up and convey the qualities you think you have, or want people to think you have.

That seems simple enough, right? And maybe it’s easier understood by what happens when you don’t open up in predictable, consistent ways: People will fill in those spaces for you. They will project a wealth of assumptions onto you. And you have no control over whether this will work to your advantage.

Not leading with the qualities you value about yourself, and that you think are central to you, is like chucking your personality to the fates, essentially, and hoping they roll the dice in your favor. Halvorson tells the story of a situation where this did work to someone’s favor—a very reserved coworker who was, she says, a “closed book” in romantic relationships:

I once asked him if this caused problems for him with the women in his life, and he told me, with remarkable candor, that he did it intentionally – he had found that women would usually interpret his silences in positive ways. (He’s so mysterious. He’s a deep thinker. Maybe he’s been hurt before – I’ll bet he’s really sensitive…) The personality they would invent for him, he said, was in fact much better than his actual personality. As a psychologist, I found this fascinating. As a single woman, on the other hand, I found it more than a little terrifying.

But she cautions that this is unlikely to be the case for most of us. Judgment is inevitable, so we might as well work on being more judgeable, or more accurately judgeable, anyway. We might as well reinforce the way we want to be perceived. This pays dividends, she argues—in psychological health, happiness, personal and professional satisfaction, and sense of purpose. And this part of her piece rings true:

If people are seeing you the way you see yourself, then you aren’t getting all the unsettling, self-doubt-inducing feedback that the chronically misunderstood have to endure. Life is simply easier and more rewarding when people “get you,” and provide you with the opportunities and support that are a good fit for you.

Now here’s a question: How long does it take to get to this point, where people “get you”? Research suggests what you might expect—not that long, and also not necessarily ever.

In a study Halvorson cites, 400 college students described themselves and their roommates over time in an effort to determine how long it takes to for perception of self and other to line up. Mostly, it took about nine months for everyone’s understandings to line up, and still no one was getting a perfect perceptual match. Even married couples, she writes, have significant misperceptions about each other! At least, the ones who are in counseling do, according to a study of 44 couples with half in therapy. But even if you’re not in counseling, the disconnect makes sense—we’re invested in seeing certain people in certain ways.

When you’re happily in love, you tend to give someone the benefit of the doubt. When someone looks a certain way, you tend to think they’ll act whatever way you associate with their appearance. When circumstances are weighing on you—your friend’s just lost your favorite sweater, or your partner’s just taken you on a vacation because she got a raise—your perception of a person will change.

We are always moving through the world this way, orienting and reorienting depending on circumstances and biases that fit how we need them to. Halvorson notes:

So you’re never really starting from scratch with another person, even when you are meeting them for the first time. The perceiver’s brain is rapidly filling in details about you – many before you have even spoken a word. Knowing this gives you a sense of what you’ve got going for you and what you might be up against. And the more you can know in advance about your perceiver’s likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses, the better equipped you will be to anticipate what’s being projected onto you.

This makes getting out in front even more crucial in the game of self-presentation. I picture it like holding the facts of you and how you want to be known like cards in your hand—cards you deal with deliberate calculation in the order you need them to be revealed. I should probably start telling people things like, “Oh you know me, I just mock people I really like!” (But what fun is that, being so predictable?)

If all that sounds really labor-intensive or even Machiavellian in terms of the work of self-presentation, it’s because it is. Which is why it’s not surprising that many of us take our chances in the world being misunderstood, hoping we get lucky enough to be gotten a handful of times over a lifetime. Sure, getting out there and upping your value on the personality market is a worthwhile evening or two. But who would blame you for looking at how much work it takes to maintain your image and calling it a night? Certainly not me. Those people, smart and deliberate and aspirational, are exactly the sorts of people I would admire—and then mock.

Illustration by Tara Jacoby

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