People relied too much on their self-perceptions, which were more negative than the impressions they made; & understood that others saw them more positively than how they saw themselves, but they did not understand the extent of this positivity

Elsaadawy, N., & Carlson, E. N. (2022). Do you make a better or worse impression than you think? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Aug 2022. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000434

Abstract: Are people’s metaperceptions, or their beliefs about how others perceive them, too positive, too negative, or spot on? Across six samples of new acquaintances (total N = 1,113) and/or well-known acquaintances (total N = 1,336), we indexed metabias (i.e., the mean-level difference between metaperceptions and impressions) on a broad range of attributes to test: (a) how biased people are on average, (b) whether bias is pervasive or limited to particular contexts (level of acquaintanceship) or attributes (e.g., liking judgments or traits), (c) whether bias is consistent across attributes, and (d) what explains bias. On average, participants demonstrated a negative metabias on most attributes for both new and well-known acquaintances, suggesting that people generally fail to appreciate how positively they are seen by others. However, there was variability around this average such that, whereas most participants were negatively biased (48%), many were accurate (34%), and some were positively biased (18%). Bias was also consistent across traits, suggesting that knowing people’s metabias for one attribute offers some insight into their relative bias for other attributes. What explained metabias? Generally, people relied too much on their self-perceptions, which were more negative than the impressions they made, although bias for new acquaintances involved additional factors. That said, people understood that others saw them more positively than how they saw themselves, but they did not understand the extent of this positivity. These results offer a general framework for understanding metabias and add to the growing literature, demonstrating that people are not positively biased.