Research Shows Our Worries Over Saying No Are for Naught
Turns out, people care far less when we decline than we think
Hiya!
Declining an invitation is much easier when I have a reason other than “because I don’t want to,” which you can no doubt relate to. We’ve all been there — being invited to a social event we’d rather not attend or being asked for a favor we don’t want to do.
But declining is often easier said than done. Anxieties and doubts tend to slither into our minds as we decide whether to decline. Will they feel rejected or start a guilt trip? Will saying “no” now mean they won’t invite me next time?
Usually, I consider whether to bite my tongue and agree or risk upsetting the relationship. But now, new research suggests all this worrying is for naught because people care far less when we decline than we think they will.
The Research
A couple of behavioral scientists, Julian Givi, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at West Virginia University, and Colleen P. Kirk, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the New York Institute of Technology, published a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In it, they explore our insecurities over saying no and investigate how much the rejection affects the person asking.
The researchers first conducted a pilot study involving 51 participants before the main studies and discovered that 77 percent had accepted an invitation to an event they didn’t want to attend. The researchers explain in an article published by The Conversation about their research that,
[The participants] worried that saying no might upset, anger or sadden the person who invited them. They also worried that they wouldn’t be invited to events down the road and that their own invitations would be rebuffed.
Following these results, Givi and Kirk conducted five more experiments for their official study, which involved over 2,000 participants. They asked some participants to imagine turning down an invitation and to predict how the inviter would feel. Then they asked other participants to imagine being rejected after extending an invitation and report their feelings about the rejection.
The Results
The results of the five experiments were fascinating because they showed a significant disconnect in expectations between invitees and inviters.
The researchers reported that, generally speaking, people assume others will react poorly when an invitation is declined. Yet, in actuality, and perhaps ironically, people who extend the invitation are relatively unaffected when someone turns them down. In The Conversation, Givi and Kirk write:
In fact, people extending invites were much more understanding – and less upset, angry or sad – than invitees anticipated. They also said they would be rather unlikely to let a single declined invitation keep them from offering or accepting invitations in the future.
This misassumption between invitees and inviters existed regardless of the relationship between the two people. For instance, people worried about the possible blowback of declining an invitation regardless of whether it involved two friends, a long-term couple, or a new couple — yet none of the people extending the invitation were bothered about whether the other person declined.
So, in the end, Givi and Kirk’s research suggests we tend to assume that when we decline an invitation, the other person will focus solely on the “cold, hard rejection,” but in reality, the person extending the invite focuses more on the intentions behind the rejections — as opposed to the rejection itself.
Those receiving the rejection care more about the consideration, deliberations, and thoughts of the person declining the invite. Rather than take the rejection personally, the research showed that people more often assume the invitee carefully considered the invitation before declining, which makes them less bothered by it. The researchers also found another intriguing consistency. They write:
Interestingly, while our research examined invitations to fun events – dinners out to restaurants with a visiting celebrity chef and trips to quirky museum exhibits – other studies have found that the same pattern emerges when someone is asked to do a favor and they decline. Even with these less enjoyable requests, people overestimate the negative implications of saying no.
Are you as relieved as I was when I learned this? Knowing that people care less about the rejection itself than the intentions and consideration behind them takes some weight off.
Advice
Knowing Givi and Kirk’s research results relieves some stress over declining invitations I don’t want to accept. Still, they go further by offering three pieces of advice to make declining future invitations even easier on ourselves.
The first is that the next time someone invites you to something you don’t want to attend, take a moment to imagine you’re the one extending the invitation. The researchers discovered that this simple mental exercise helps us avoid overestimating the adverse outcomes of declining by reminding us that we wouldn’t care as much as we assume the other person will.
Secondly, the researchers say that offering an explanation helps too. A recurring reason people say no to invitations is due to money, but the duo explains that while it can feel uncomfortable, research shows people are “especially understanding” when money is the reason for declining.
Lastly, if you can’t or don’t want to explain your reasons for saying no, there is one other response that some therapists suggest — the “no but.” This is when you decline an invitation but offer to do something else with the person.
Doing this helps soften the blow of your rejection by clarifying that you aren’t rejecting the person, just the activity. This easy tactic also allows you to suggest an activity you actually enjoy. The researchers do have one bit of cautionary advice, though:
Of course, there’s a caveat to all of this: If you decline every invitation sent your way, at some point they’ll probably stop coming. But assuming you aren’t a habitual naysayer, don’t beat yourself up if you end up declining an invitation every now and then. Chances are that the person who invited you will be less bothered than you think.
Perspective Shift
I’ve spent most of my life defaulting to being a people-pleaser because I never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings. I have said yes to countless invitations I didn’t actually want to accept. But there are a couple of things I’ve learned that the researchers didn’t really mention.
The first, and what I often have to remind myself of, is that saying yes when I don’t want to doesn’t benefit anyone, including the person I’m saying yes to. After all, wouldn’t the person rather I accept because I want to than have me show up when I don’t want to be there? No one wants anyone around if they don’t want to be there.
The second is that declining invites often ends up strengthening my relationships because it helps us understand each other better so we can find activities we both enjoy. It also shows me who respects my boundaries and who doesn’t — if someone throws a fit about me saying no, then is that someone I really want to have a relationship with?
That said, sometimes it’s good to say yes to invites, even when your initial reaction is to decline, because it opens you up to new experiences or meeting new people. You never know where such events will lead. Maybe they’ll radically change your life for the better.
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I can relate to this more than most people. Good insights. Thanks