People think they know their friends and family well, but they don't. At least not as well as they think they do. When trying to imagine what their family members believe, what they experience, and how they behave, people are often mistaken. One of the reasons for these mistakes is what people want to believe—people want to see the best in the people they care about.
But each person has their own definition of "best." For one person it may be trying new and exciting things, always looking for different experiences. For another, "best" may be looking for security and stability in life, and settling into a comfortable routine. For some people, it may be always trying to be the most successful at whatever you do, while others may care more about prioritizing their relationships. What defines each person's individual perspective of "best'" is their values: what they see as positive and important, what they believe in, and what they want to achieve**.**
We wanted to know how the personal values people hold are connected to how they see others. Specifically, we focused on close relationships, and asked whether people see their friends, partners, and family as more similar to their own values than they really are.
Testing How One's Values Are Connected to What They Think of Others
We tested this in a series of six studies involving a total of 2,225 participants from four countries (Israel, Italy, Poland, and Finland). We sampled participants from different populations, including teenagers, college students, young couples, middle-aged married couples, parents of newborns and of adolescents. In each study we asked people to report on their own values and some characteristics of a person they are close to. We also asked the other person to report that characteristic of themselves. For example, people reported how much they value achievement and success, and how much they think their romantic partner behaves in a way which corresponds with this value, such as spend a lot of time on work, school, or hobbies in order to be successful. Their partner also reported how much they really behaved this way. Participants similarly reported on other values, and other behaviors.
We found that people think their romantic partner behaves in ways that correspond with their own values, more than they really do. This is true of how people think about their children, parents, friends, partners in new relationships, and spouses of 20 years. It is true for different values and for perception of different characteristics, including how others behave and the values they believe in.
How to Understand Each Other Better
We do know a lot about our family, our friends, and our romantic partners—but we don't know everything. When we try to understand what they want in life, what they believe in, and how they are likely to behave, we project our own expectations on to them. Being aware of this is the first step to better understanding one another.
A second step is asking, and actually listening, to people describing their lives, their hopes and their dreams. We should also remember others think this way about us, and explicitly tell them about ourselves, even if we assume they know.
Sadly, humans still can't read minds, but if we communicate we might get a bit closer.
For Further Reading
Ginosar Yaari, S., Katsoty, D., Bardi, A., Barni, D., Skimina, E., Cieciuch, J., Lönnqvist, J.-E., Verkasalo, M. J., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2024). Wishful perceiving: A value-based bias for perception of close others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000482
Murray, S. L., Holmes, J. G., Dolderman, D., & Griffin, D. W. (2000). What the motivated mind sees: Comparing friends' perspectives to married partners' views of each other. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36(6), 600–620. https://doi.org/10.1006/jesp.1999.1417
Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An overview of the Schwartz theory of basic values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116
Shir Ginosar Yaari is a PhD student at the Psychology Department in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focused on goals, emotion regulation and perception in interpersonal interactions.
Ariel Knafo-Noam is a Professor of Developmental Psychology at the Psychology Department in The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His work focuses on the development of individual differences in pro-social behavior, empathy and personal values.