Three everyday habits have been tested in studies on how other people judge you: interrupting, bragging about how stressed you are, and holding your body in a closed, folded-in posture. Each one made people like the person less, or made them less likely to pick that person. The evidence comes from three studies: one on interruptions in conversation, one on complaints about stress at work, and one on speed dates and a dating app.
Interrupting makes you look powerful but less likable
Psychologist Sally Farley ran two experiments on how people judge someone who interrupts, published in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. According to the paper, in the first experiment participants listened to a short recorded conversation in which one speaker cut the other off five times. In the second, the same study had four trained actors (two men and two women) interrupt real participants while they discussed an article together.
Observers saw interrupters as higher in status, and the people they cut off lost status. People who had been interrupted also rated themselves as less influential. The price was paid in liking: interrupters were liked less than people who let others finish, and the drop was larger for women who interrupted.
Interrupting works as a power move. It raises how important you look and lowers how much people want to deal with you.
Bragging about stress makes coworkers like you less
Telling everyone how busy and stressed you are is a common way to show that you work hard. Jessica Rodell, Braydon Shanklin, and Emma Frank tested how coworkers react in a paper in Personnel Psychology, and the University of Georgia summed it up as stress bragging makes you seem less competent and likable.
In the first study, 360 participants read statements from imagined coworkers who had just come back from a conference, according to the university. One coworker called the conference “just one more thing on my full plate” and said they were “already stressed to the max.” Participants rated that person as less likable and less competent than a coworker who simply said work was stressful, or one who talked about how good the conference was. They also said they would be less willing to help the stress bragger if they had too much work themselves.
A second study surveyed 218 employees about their real coworkers, and the university reports similar results. The paper adds a cost for the people around the bragger: coworkers of frequent stress braggers reported more stress and burnout. Feeling stressed is not the problem. According to the release, people who mentioned stress in passing, or who simply seemed stressed, did not draw the same ill will.
A closed posture gets fewer yes answers on dates
A team led by Vacharkulksemsuk and Carney reported in PNAS that an open, expansive posture made people more romantically appealing. In a closed posture, as the paper defines it, the arms and legs stay close to the body and the body folds inward to take up little space.
In a field study of 144 speed dates, the team coded each person’s posture on a scale from closed to expanded. The paper reports an odds ratio of 1.76 for each step toward a more open posture, close to doubling the odds of getting a “yes” from the date partner.
The team then tested cause and effect on a GPS-based dating app with 12 profiles: six people, each shown once in open poses and once in closed poses. According to the same paper, 2,983 app users responded to the profiles, and 447 of the 820 “yes” answers (about 55%) went to the open-posture photos. The authors’ analysis suggests the open posture worked because it made the person look more dominant.
What these studies measured
Each finding comes from one setting. The interruption and stress-bragging studies measured how observers and coworkers rated someone, mostly after short, staged scenarios. The speed-dating part of the posture study was correlational, which is why the authors added the app experiment; that experiment used only three men and three women as profiles, so the authors treat differences between the sexes as tentative. None of the three studies followed real friendships over months.
What to do instead
Letting people finish does not mean staying quiet. A Gromeus article on conversation research found that people who talk at least half the time are liked more. Asking real questions also pays off: asking follow-up questions and recalling small details mark a good listener. For stress, Rodell’s advice in the university release is to share it with a well-chosen confidant instead of announcing it to the whole office.
Sources and related information
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior – Attaining status at the expense of likeability: pilfering power through conversational interruption – 2008
Sally Farley’s paper (DOI 10.1007/s10919-008-0054-x) reports two experiments showing that interrupters gained status but were liked less, more so for women who interrupted.
Personnel Psychology – “I’m so stressed!”: The relational consequences of stress bragging – 2024
Rodell, Shanklin, and Frank (DOI 10.1111/peps.12645) show in a lab experiment and a field study that stress braggers are rated less competent and less warm, get less help from coworkers, and leave those coworkers more burned out.
University of Georgia – Stress bragging may make you seem less competent, less likable at work – 2024
The university’s release of 23 May 2024 gives the 360-participant and 218-employee samples, the conference statement used in the experiment, and Rodell’s advice to share stress with a confidant.
PNAS – Dominant, open nonverbal displays are attractive at zero-acquaintance – 2016
Vacharkulksemsuk and colleagues (DOI 10.1073/pnas.1508932113) link an open, expansive posture to more yes answers in 144 speed dates and in a dating-app experiment with 2,983 users.
