If you think no one notices that you're perpetually late for dinner, you're probably underestimating the effects of a simple faux pas and jeopardizing relationships in the process.
Lori McKinney, Ph.D., of Governors State University in Illinois and Leonard Newman, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Chicago asked 84 students to rate how their friends or significant others would react if they broke a promise, stood them up, arrived late or failed to return a borrowed item. Researchers then asked the injured parties how strongly they'd actually feel about such infractions.
It turns out that some subjects, identified through earlier psychological tests as "repressors," seriously underestimated the impact of their negligent behavior on others. These subjects "were not at all in tune with their partners' responses and thought everything was going to be OK," says McKinney, who published the findings in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. "The nonrepressors, on the other hand, actually overestimated the negative effects of such behavior."
