Why your friends might know you better than you do

Your friends might know you better than you do in some ways because they can see things you can't: how you actually come across, and traits that are hard to judge fairly about yourself. Research suggests people who know you well can match or beat your own accuracy on certain traits and behaviours. They do not know you better across the board, though, and that is the interesting part.

It helps to think of your friends and yourself as two different sources of information, each with its own strengths and gaps.

Most of us assume we are the expert

It feels obvious that you are the world authority on you. You have been there for every moment, after all. Simine Vazire and Matthias Mehl documented how strongly people hold this belief. Then they tested it.

They compared people's own ratings and close others' ratings against an objective record of everyday behaviour, gathered over four days. Close others were just as accurate as the person themselves. The two views also often added separate information. The authors concluded that there is no single perspective from which a person is known best.

So your friend isn't necessarily beating you, and you aren't beating your friend. Each of you holds a piece of the picture.

What friends see that you may not

Vazire and Erika Carlson reviewed why others can have this edge. They suggest two main reasons you might have blind spots.

You lack some of the information

You never see your own face when you are annoyed. You don't hear how your voice changes when you talk about your sister. You don't watch yourself walk into a room. Friends have a front-row seat to all of it, and they have seen you in many settings.

You care how it turns out

We all want to see ourselves in certain ways. That motive can tilt how we read our own behaviour. Vazire and Carlson note that this effect is especially strong for traits that are very desirable or undesirable, which is when your own wishes are most likely to get in the way.

Your friends have feelings about you too, of course. But they are probably less invested in whether you are a good listener than you are.

What you still know best

This is where the research offers a reassuring balance. Vazire's self-other knowledge asymmetry model predicts that you should know more about traits that are hard to observe, while others do better on traits that are loaded with social value.

Her study of 165 people, each rated by friends and strangers, backed that up:

• You were the best judge of neuroticism-related traits, which relate to inner experience such as worry
• Friends were the best judges of intellect-related traits
• All perspectives did about equally well on extraversion-related traits

So if you have been quietly anxious for years and nobody knows, that is not a failure of insight on your part. It is exactly what the model predicts. You have access to your inner life that your friends simply don't. You will find more on this in our article about how accurately people rate themselves.

How much does closeness matter?

A lot, it seems, though not in the way you might guess. Brian Connelly and Deniz Ones combined data on more than 44,000 people across 263 samples. Seeing someone often improved accuracy, but real interpersonal closeness was needed for substantial gains. Closeness helped especially with traits that are hard to see, such as emotional stability.

For traits high in social value, such as agreeableness, closeness made only a small difference.

Their results also carry a surprise. Ratings from other people were strong predictors of behaviour. For academic achievement and job performance, they predicted outcomes substantially better than self-ratings, and they added information on top of them. Those findings come from research settings, so take them as a sign that outside views are valuable, not as proof that your mates can forecast your career.

Why you might not hear it from them

If friends know this much, why don't they just tell you? Often because they are being kind. Nobody wants to be the one who mentions that you always steer the conversation back to work. Friends also tend to save compliments for birthdays, which means you might not hear the good stuff either.

A gap between how you see yourself and how others see you is rarely a verdict. Often it is pleasant news. "You seem much calmer than you think you are" is a common sort of surprise. When it is harder news, it tells you how you come across, and that is something you can work with.

How to tap into what your friends know

Here are a few easy ways to start:

1. Ask a narrow question. "When I am stressed, what do you notice first?" will get you much further than "what do you think of me?".
2. Ask more than one person. One friend's view can reflect your particular friendship. A pattern across several people tells you more.
3. Ask people who know you well. The research suggests closeness matters, especially for the things that are hard to see.
4. Don't argue. Listen, say thanks and think it over. Our guide on how to ask for honest feedback has more specific wording.
5. Make honesty easy. Many people find it easier to be candid when their answer isn't attached to their name.

That last point is why Second Sight keeps raters anonymous. Friends, family and co-workers see a short version of the same test, written about you, and you only ever see their answers as averages combined with at least two other raters. The Partner circle works differently, as a named, one-to-one comparison and your partner is told that before they rate.

Start with your own view

To compare two views, you need yours first. The Core Personality Expedition is free to take with no sign-up, and it uses public-domain IPIP items based on the Big-Five Factor Markers. Take it, then find out what your friends have been noticing all along.