We’ve all been there: You’re hanging with a group of friends (either in real time or virtual), and one casually mentions doing something with the other — but neither explicitly mentions you. You’re faced with a dilemma. Inviting yourself when you’re not wanted could come off as intrusive at best, rude at worst. And not inviting yourself will leave you left out and feeling rejected.
A new study now should put such anxieties to rest. In such situations, you’re more welcome than you think, according to an article in Personal and Social Psychology Bulletin.
The Psychology Behind Rejection
Julian Givi, a West Virginia University professor and an author of the study, first became interested in this issue when he explored the other side of rejection. He conducted a study that explored how hosts feel when a potential guest declines an invitation. The result? A “no” was far less psychologically devastating to the host than the potential guest estimated.
In both cases, Givi wanted to understand not just the responses and their ramifications but the thought processes behind them. To pursue a solid, scientifically valid result, he conducted eight studies with several thousand participants.
Read More: In Social Situations, Narcissists Tend to Feel More Left Out and Ostracized
Thought Process Behind Informal Invitations
In the first study, 340 participants were asked to remember scenarios from the last five years where they were either directly invited or “self-invited” to join a social activity. They described how they felt in each situation. Then, researchers analyzed the text of their responses with software.
Later studies constructed role-playing scenarios where participants used structured scenarios to isolate specific psychological factors. Participants were randomly assigned roles as either “potential self-inviters” or “plan-holders.” Then they were asked to imagine situations where a mutual friend mentioned a plan but didn’t explicitly invite them or a situation when another person asked them along. Researchers then measured how irritated or annoyed they thought the other participants would be if they tagged along.
The findings consistently found that potential self-inviters were less likely to attend than what the plan holders across studies said they would prefer. This held true even when the plan-holders had invited the self-inviter to past events or when they made efforts to ease logistical obstacles.
The researchers discovered that potential self-inviters made two common assumptions. First, they overestimated how annoyed the plan holder would be if the self-inviters asked to join. Second, they wrongly believed that the plan holders had considered inviting them and then decided not to, which felt like a form of social rejection. In reality, the people making plans often hadn’t thought about inviting others at all.
So, why do people hold back from asking to join? The research pointed to two major factors. First, they incorrectly worried that the plan holders had thought about inviting them but decided to actively reject them.
Such assumptions are based more on psychological phenomena like egocentrism. That leads to practices where self-inviters essentially try to mind-read the planners, then “…potential self-inviters exaggerate the likelihood that plan-holders had already considered inviting them but decided against it," the study said.
The authors add that there are some exceptions, like formal situations. If you are not invited to a wedding, it's generally a good idea not to crash it.
Read More: Instead of Making us Nervous, Audiences Can Motivate us to do Better
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Personal and Social Psychology Bulletin. Self-Invitation Hesitation: How and Why People Fail to Ask to Join the Plans of Others
American Psychology Association. Saying no: The negative ramifications from invitation declines are less severe than we think.
Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
