Why We Misunderstand Each Other: The Psychology of Communication

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place” – George Bernard Shaw

You know what you meant. You remember the context, the feeling behind your words, and the details that led you to say them. The other person gets only what you actually say, along with whatever they already know.

That gap is where many misunderstandings begin. We often assume other people can see what we see, know what we know, or understand what we meant. Psychology suggests that making those adjustments is harder than it feels, especially when we are rushed or emotionally involved.

This does not mean people are careless or incapable of understanding one another. It means communication depends on more than good intentions. It also depends on noticing what has not been said, what the other person could reasonably understand, and where our assumptions may differ.

We Start With Our Own Point of View

When you try to imagine what someone else thinks, your own perspective is already there. You know your reasons, so it can be difficult to set them aside and work out what the other person could reasonably infer from the words you used.

In a series of experiments, Epley, Keysar, Van Boven, and Gilovich found that people often begin with their own interpretation and adjust toward another person’s perspective, but do not adjust far enough. Under time pressure, participants were more likely to rely on their own view. Incentives to be accurate reduced the bias (Epley et al., 2004).

That pattern helps explain an everyday experience: a message seems perfectly clear to the person who wrote it, then lands differently with the person who receives it. The sender knows what they meant to include. The recipient has to work from the words, tone, and context available to them.

The more obvious something feels to you, the easier it may be to forget that it is not equally obvious to someone else. A request can feel specific in your mind because you have already pictured the outcome. But the other person may not know which part matters most, what you expect them to do, or why you are asking.

Knowing More Can Make Explaining Harder

Suppose you have spent weeks learning a topic. You may forget what it was like not to know its basic terms, steps, or assumptions. When you explain it, you might skip the very information a newcomer needs.

This is often called the curse of knowledge. Birch and Bloom tested how adults reason about another person’s false beliefs: beliefs that differ from what is actually true. They found that adults’ own knowledge of an outcome could interfere with their ability to predict what someone who lacked that knowledge would believe. The effect was influenced by how plausible the outcome seemed to the person doing the judging (Birch & Bloom, 2007).

The point is not that experts cannot explain things. It is that knowing the answer can make it harder to reconstruct what it is like not to know it. A teacher, writer, or colleague may unintentionally leave out a step because it feels too basic to mention. The listener then has to guess what was left unsaid.

The same thing can happen outside teaching. Someone may refer to an earlier conversation without naming it, use a shorthand phrase they think is familiar, or give an update that makes sense only with background information the other person does not have. From the speaker’s side, the message feels complete. From the listener’s side, it may feel abrupt or confusing.

Speakers and Listeners Bring Different Context

We often speak as if shared experience guarantees shared understanding. But people can be present for the same conversation and still have different information, attention, or assumptions.

Horton and Keysar studied how speakers describe objects to a listener who did not have access to all the same visual information. When speakers had time, their descriptions showed more sensitivity to what the listener could see. Under time pressure, that adjustment was reduced. Their results suggest that, in this task, speakers often began with an available description and relied on later monitoring to adapt it for the listener (Horton & Keysar, 1996).

Listeners also have to work out which meaning a speaker intends. In a pair of experiments, Keysar and colleagues tracked listeners’ eye movements as they followed instructions to move objects. Listeners sometimes considered objects that the speaker could not see, even though the speaker’s words were meant to refer to something in their shared view. The researchers argued that listeners could begin from their own perspective and use knowledge of the speaker’s perspective to correct their interpretation (Keysar et al., 2000).

These studies used carefully controlled laboratory tasks, not every kind of natural conversation. They do not show that people never take one another’s perspective. They do show how an initial interpretation can get ahead of the effort to check whether it fits the other person’s knowledge.

That matters because both sides can feel they are following the conversation. The speaker believes the context is shared; the listener fills in gaps using the context they have. If those assumptions differ, each person may leave with a different understanding without realizing it.

We Think Our Feelings Are Easier to Read Than They Are

Sometimes we do not leave out information because we assume the other person already knows it. We leave it out because we feel that it is already visible.

Gilovich, Savitsky, and Medvec studied what they called the illusion of transparency: the tendency to overestimate how easily other people can read our internal states. In their experiments, people who lied overestimated how detectable their lies were, and people experiencing disgust overestimated how apparent their feelings were to others. The researchers also explored how this belief could affect people’s willingness to intervene in emergencies (Gilovich et al., 1998).

A feeling can be intense on the inside without being obvious on the outside. You may think your frustration is unmistakable, while the other person sees only a short reply. You may believe your concern is clear, while your words sound neutral. Then, when the other person does not respond as expected, it can feel as if they ignored something you never clearly expressed.

This is not a reason to doubt your feelings. It is a reminder that feelings do not always communicate themselves. If you want someone to understand that you are hurt, worried, or asking for help, naming it can be clearer than hoping they will infer it from a pause, a look, or a change in tone.

Conflict Makes Different Interpretations Feel Personal

Misunderstandings become harder to repair when each person believes they are seeing the situation objectively. If your interpretation feels like the plain facts, someone who disagrees may seem irrational, dishonest, or deliberately difficult.

Robinson and colleagues examined how people with opposing views interpreted the same social issues. Their work on “naive realism” described how people can mistake their own construal of a situation for an objective account, while underestimating how a reasonable person could interpret the same information differently (Robinson et al., 1995).

This does not mean every disagreement is a misunderstanding, or that all interpretations are equally accurate. It means disagreement alone does not prove that the other person is foolish or acting in bad faith. People may have different information, attend to different details, or place different weight on the same facts.

Once conflict begins, each person may also focus more on proving their own interpretation than on finding out what the other person actually heard. A small gap can turn into a bigger one: one person argues against what they think was meant, while the other defends an intention they never made clear.

How to Make the Gap Smaller

The research does not offer a magic phrase that prevents miscommunication. It does point toward a few useful habits.

Say the part that feels obvious. If an instruction, request, or explanation depends on information the other person may not have, include it. A short extra sentence can prevent a long argument.

Check understanding without treating it like a test. Instead of asking only, “Does that make sense?”, try, “What did you take me to mean?” That gives you a chance to notice where your message and their interpretation diverged.

Make feelings explicit. If you want someone to know you are hurt, worried, or asking for help, do not rely on the feeling to announce itself. Name it as plainly as you can.

Slow down when the stakes are high. Epley and colleagues found greater perspective-taking bias under time pressure. When a conversation matters, taking a moment to ask what the other person knows, or what they might be missing, can be more useful than rushing to defend your first interpretation.

And when a disagreement starts to feel obvious, get curious before you get certain. Ask what information the other person is working from and what they think happened. You do not have to agree with their conclusion to understand how they reached it.

The Takeaway

Good communication is not just saying what you mean. It is noticing that your meaning is not automatically available to someone else.

We start from our own point of view, carry knowledge the listener may not have, and often overestimate how much our words and feelings reveal. These are ordinary limits, not proof that people do not care. The practical response is not to blame ourselves for every misunderstanding. It is to make important context clearer, check what the other person heard, and leave room for the possibility that their view makes sense from where they are standing.

References

1. Epley, N., Keysar, B., Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(3), 327-339. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.87.3.327
2. Birch, S. A. J., & Bloom, P. (2007). The curse of knowledge in reasoning about false beliefs. Psychological Science, 18(5), 382-386. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01909.x
3. Horton, W. S., & Keysar, B. (1996). When do speakers take into account common ground? Cognition, 59(1), 91-117. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1016/0010-0277(96)81418-1
4. Keysar, B., Barr, D. J., Balin, J. A., & Brauner, J. S. (2000). Taking perspective in conversation: The role of mutual knowledge in comprehension. Psychological Science, 11(1), 32-38. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00211
5. Gilovich, T., Savitsky, K., & Medvec, V. H. (1998). The illusion of transparency: Biased assessments of others’ ability to read one’s emotional states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(2), 332-346. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.75.2.332
6. Robinson, R. J., Keltner, D., Ward, A., & Ross, L. (1995). Actual versus assumed differences in construal: “Naive realism” in intergroup perception and conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(3), 404-417. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.68.3.404

Kehinde Triumph Kehinde Triumph is an undergraduate psychology student at the University of Ibadan and writer interested in how context shapes human behavior. His essays on psychology and culture appear on Substack and Medium.