How Polite Behavior Limits Social Feedback and Contributes to Erroneous Self and Social Judgment

The present investigation explored whether polite behavior misleads conversation partners to overconfident perceptions of their abilities. In this study, participants in pairs were assigned either to deliver a persuasive appeal or to be the target of such an appeal. Results indicate that participants in the persuader role left the interaction believing that they had been more successful in their appeal than their targets indicate. The inclusion of a third group of participants acting as third-party observers reveal that this error occurs because targets do not offer feedback regarding their true opinion. Further analyses suggest that the degree to which persuaders make erroneous judgments is tied directly to their targets' awareness of social norms for politeness and their consequent masking of disagreement within the conversation.