Why do people flatter themselves?

Office love rat: There is a beautiful woman in the company. I like her, and I don't think she is very disgusted with me. ..... Sometimes she gives me a bag of coffee, and sometimes she smiles at me. She is so considerate to me! She must like me ... Forget it if you don't believe me. I just told her, "If you don't be my girlfriend, I'll kill myself." She slapped me and called me crazy. You see, she was so concerned about my life and death that she advised me not to commit suicide-calling me "crazy" is proof. Since she likes me so much, I'm going to ask her out again tomorrow, and I think I can do it in the evening ..., hahaha ... < P > Female colleague: I finally got off work. Nima, I met a psycho in the office. He kept staring at me with a smirk, and finally said that he would commit suicide if he didn't be his girlfriend? Have you ever seen such a person? Dare the world be normal? I am a good girl with quality and courtesy. Can't heaven open its eyes? Let these people die away, okay? If I meet such a person again, I will spray him to death with a mouthful of salt soda ...

The above story is of course a joke, but in the face of a favorite opposite sex, we are often confused like love rat, and more or less have the illusion that the other person also likes me. Why is this? The following answers given by psychologists may help us solve the confusion.

Misunderstood "Romance"

Psychologists believe that the first reason for our narcissism lies in the misreading of love information. For example, in a joke just now, love rat misunderstood the politeness of a female colleague as an implicit romance. In fact, this misunderstanding is very easy to occur between the sexes.

The reason is very simple. Love is a very subtle psychological state. On many occasions, love information is transmitted in a very subtle way. For example, the eyes of "flirting" and "making eyes at each other" may not be noticed by others, but the parties may get the message; Another example is ambiguous language (except naked courtship confession). These words have nothing to do with love on the surface, but they are actually intended to be hidden, which can be interpreted naturally by those who have the heart.

However, people's emotions are invisible, and rich emotions also have various forms of expression. Some emotional expressions are quite different and easy to distinguish; There are also some similar emotional expressions. For example, love is very close to affection, sympathy, gratitude and admiration, and it is easy to be confused. If the information receiver is a single young man who is full of love, it is not surprising that he regards politeness as a favor and small talk as a chat.

"self-verification" of "love expectation"

People are easy to flatter themselves, and there is also a kind of "self-verification" psychology at work. People have a certain view or idea about something, and often look for some manifestations of this thing consciously or unconsciously to prove their views or ideas are correct. For example, the ancient fable "A suspect steals an axe" is like this. A man suspected that his neighbor had stolen his axe, so it seemed that his neighbor acted like a thief. Later, the axe was found in his own woodpile, and his neighbor didn't look like a thief at all. On the issue of love, the same is true. Just like the scene in the previous joke, the most important reason why love rat is daydreaming is that he likes her, which leads to such a big misunderstanding. In other words, love and pursuit are the core reasons for the problem of "why do people flatter themselves?"

what kind of "expectation" will love produce? It's simple. If I like each other, I want them to like me. However, this simple expectation can create many psychological processes. First of all, it will quietly affect the way I collect each other's information. For example, she often smiles at everyone, but I will pay more attention to her smile at me; She may be cruel to everyone, but I will pay more attention to her cruelty to others-because the anticipation in advance provided me with a framework for collecting information, and we unconsciously integrated the collected information into this framework.

of course, simply collecting information is not enough to impress us. We are not satisfied with the collection of information, but also interpret it, which is also affected by expectations. For example, why did she look back at me? Why is she stroking her hair in front of me? Why did she accidentally touch me? Information itself is emotionless. However, my interpretation of information has been subjectively branded. Naturally, the wrong association between "information" and "expectation" has arisen-she accidentally touched me, and I will feel that this is implying something. Here, I not only misread "touching me" as her active behavior, but also wrongly associate "touching me" with "having a good impression on me".

So, under the guidance of "expectation", "self-verification" is realized. I hope the other person will like me, so I talk and laugh in front of her, taking care of everything. At this time, my behavior also obviously affected her behavior, because I smiled at her, and she felt embarrassed and smiled back. As a result, I further deepened my illusion of love.

Men are more likely to be romantic

Our romantic feelings are not accidental. Psychological research shows that men are more likely to overestimate the interest of the opposite sex than women, and interestingly, this illusion is an evolutionary advantage, which actually helps men improve their reproductive success rate.

Professor Karin Perilhou of Williams College in the United States invited 96 male and 13 female college students to participate in the "Speed Matching Experiment". These people will take part in a speed dating activity, and each person will talk to five opposite sex for 3 minutes. Before the conversation begins, participants will rate their attractiveness, and researchers will judge their desire for the opposite sex. After each speed-dating conversation, each participant will rate each other, including physical attraction and interest in themselves. The experimental results show that some men are more likely to perceive each other's information wrongly. For example, men who are eager for short-term sexual contact are more likely to overestimate women's interest in them. In addition, men are more likely to misread the signals sent by attractive women, that is to say, the more attractive women they meet, the more men will overestimate this woman's interest in themselves. However, men who are highly rated by women, that is, men who are really attractive in women's eyes, have not made such a "self-righteous" mistake. Perilhou believes that attractive men are easily welcomed by women, so they seldom have the illusion of "self-love".

When judging whether a woman likes herself or not, men may make two kinds of mistakes: the first is to think that she is infatuated with me, and if a woman doesn't like him, men will pay the price of embarrassment or loss of self-esteem; The second is "she was interested in him, but he ignored it". In this way, men miss the opportunity, which is a huge loss. Therefore, for men, they would definitely rather make the first mistake than the second.

Perilhou's research has taught both men and women an important lesson-men need to understand that the more they like a woman, the easier it is for them to mistakenly think that this woman likes them, even if this is not the case; And women need to understand that they need to express more clearly whether they are attracted to a man, so as to avoid embarrassment and reduce trouble.