Among the strangers paired up to talk in Erica Boothby’s original liking-gap studies, participants systematically underestimated how much their conversation partner liked them. Rejection sensitivity didn’t predict the gap at all. Why shyness specifically, and not the othersThe result lines up with what shyness actually is, as distinct from the traits it gets lumped in with. Low self-esteem is a general negative view of one’s own worth; rejection sensitivity is a heightened alertness to signs of social rejection specifically; narcissism involves an inflated self-view that, if anything, might be expected to shrink the liking gap rather than widen it. It would be easy to assume that anyone anxious about social standing — someone high in rejection sensitivity, or low in self-esteem — would show the same distorted read.