Have you ever walked away from a conversation with someone new, cringing over how you might have come across? Did that joke really land? Do I still have some of my lunch in my teeth? Was that the right way to pronounce “Loewe”? Ugh.

The common message for overcoming such vigilance is to simply have more confidence. But in fairness, these conversations are a fundamental part of life. They have the power to turn strangers into friends, coffee dates into marriages, and interviews into jobs. The anxiety is rooted in something much more real: Will this person want to see me again? If either party is intimidated or afraid of rejection, then it’s understandable that they might be guarded about how much they’re enjoying a conversation, in case that enthusiasm is not reciprocated.

In 2018, Psychological Science published a study: “The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?” The answer to this question, it turned out, was almost always a resounding yes. The study observed strangers meeting in a range of scenarios and found that people will systematically underestimate the extent to which their interlocutor liked them and enjoyed their company—even if all signs to the contrary were present. The authors called this mistaken belief “the liking gap.”

Looked at one way, Psychological Science’s study confirms something that is deeply frustrating: Most people know when they are worrying too much about how they are perceived, and yet still allow themselves to get caught up in thinking about it rather than being present with the other person. On the other hand, knowledge is power: Many studies attest to the phenomenon, and so the reassurance that it is a universal experience is particularly welcome. Perhaps all you need to bridge the liking gap is to just acknowledge that it happens to the best of us—and to always have a breath mint on hand, just in case.