A study led by researchers from the University of Bucharest has found that socially anxious individuals who open up about personal experiences are judged more likeable and more likely to be interacted with, regardless of their own level of anxiety. The researchers also say the personality traits of the listener play a major role in these assessments.
Social anxiety involves a fear of negative evaluation in social or performance settings. People with the condition often protect themselves with safety behaviours such as avoiding eye contact, staying quiet, or withdrawing from a group.
While these strategies feel protective, they can trigger a cycle in which peers interpret withdrawal as disinterest or aloofness. When others respond coolly, the anxious individual may take it as confirmation of their fears, reinforcing avoidance and limiting positive social experiences.
Self-disclosure—the act of revealing personal thoughts, feelings, past events and future plans—was the focus of the study. The researchers, Gabriela Lavinia Niță and Violeta Ștefania Rotărescu, wanted to see how different levels of sharing might alter perceived likeability, while also turning attention to the listener rather than the speaker.
To test their ideas, the team assembled 136 online evaluators who acted as raters and four university students as speakers. Two of the speakers had diagnosed social anxiety and two did not, with one man and one woman in each pair.
Evaluators judged each speaker across four stages: first from a basic photograph, then from a short video in which the speaker shared general personal information, followed by a video in which the speaker recounted a happy memory from school, and finally a video in which the speaker disclosed a sad or negative school experience.
After each stage, participants completed questionnaires rating the speaker’s likeability and their own desire for future interaction, such as sitting next to them on a bus or seeking advice.
Results showed that sharing personal stories enhanced how likeable the speakers were, compared with the initial impression formed from the photograph alone. This improvement applied to both speakers with social anxiety and those without.
Sharing a negative experience also increased the evaluators’ desire to interact with the speaker in the future. As speakers revealed more vulnerability, they were generally perceived as more approachable.
Following the video assessments, the researchers conducted a second analysis using the evaluators’ own personality measures. The surveys looked at traits such as extraversion and agreeableness, as well as the evaluators’ own levels of social anxiety and their need for affiliation—their desire to feel accepted and connected.
Interestingly, the study found that an evaluator’s extraversion and agreeableness did not alter their ratings of likeability.
Instead, evaluators who scored higher for social anxiety tended to rate all speakers as more likeable, regardless of whether the speaker was anxious. A similar pattern emerged for those with a high need for affiliation, who gave higher likeability scores across the board.
The researchers suggest that people who crave social connection may be more sensitive to cues of inclusion, prompting them to view others more positively as a way to avoid conflict and foster reassurance.
Limitations noted include the potential halo effect if some speakers were physically more attractive and the reliance on self-reported questionnaires, which can be affected by participants’ self-awareness and honesty. The online format with prerecorded videos also lacks the immediacy of real-life interaction, and the survey length—nearly an hour—could have contributed to fatigue.
Future work could involve live, in-person interactions to capture the back-and-forth of social exchanges and observe how socially anxious individuals handle self-disclosure in real time.
The study is titled Is Likeability in the Eye of the Beholder? A Quasi-Experimental Study on Personality, Social Anxiety and the Need for Affiliation in Assessing the Likability of Socially Anxious Adults, and was authored by Gabriela Lavinia Niță and Violeta Ștefania Rotărescu.
