If a person frequently does these 9 things during group conversations, they’re probably not as well-liked as they assume

Every group dinner has two conversations. The first one happens at the table. The second one happens in the car on the way home, when two people who were there finally say what they actually thought.

That second conversation is where reputations get made. Somebody gets called fun. Somebody else gets called sweet. And somebody gets a long pause, followed by I mean, he’s fine, but…

Most people worry that they’re the one getting the pause, and most of them are wrong.

In a series of studies led by psychologists Erica Boothby and Gus Cooney, people consistently underestimated how much their conversation partners liked them after talking, whether the conversation lasted a few minutes or stretched over months.

The people who should be worried usually aren’t. They left the table feeling great. They told the best stories, got the biggest laughs, and kept things moving. From their seat, the night went well.

What they missed is that groups keep a quiet tally of who gives the room energy and who takes it. It’s part of why the person who says the least sometimes leaves the strongest impression.

The habits that cost people goodwill in a group are rarely dramatic. They’re small, they repeat, and they’re almost always invisible to the person doing them.

1. They answer every story with a bigger one of their own

Someone mentions their flight got delayed two hours. They were once stuck on a tarmac for six. Someone says their kid has strep. Theirs had pneumonia the same week the family moved.

Every story that starts with someone else ends with them. And the group, which was leaning toward the first person, turns politely toward the second.

Sociologist Charles Derber calls this a shift response: a reply that moves attention off the last speaker and back onto yourself.

Journalist Celeste Headlee wrote about doing it to a grieving friend, answering the friend’s loss with the story of her own father’s death. The friend’s response was, “Okay, Celeste, you win.”

One-uppers usually think they’re relating. The people around them hear a competition nobody else signed up for.

2. They ask questions but never follow up on the answers

They do ask. How was the trip? And then, halfway through the answer, they’re telling everyone about the time they went to Portugal.

The question wasn’t really a question. It was a runway to get the conversation where they wanted it to go.

In a set of studies from Harvard researchers, people who asked more questions, particularly follow-up questions, were better liked by the people they were talking to. A later reanalysis challenged one of the studies, though the original authors stood by their results.

A follow-up question is proof you heard the first answer. Wait, why Lisbon and not Porto? costs nothing and tells someone you were actually listening.

3. They humblebrag about things nobody asked about

Ugh, I’m so tired, they keep asking me to lead every project. I hate that I can’t gain weight no matter what I eat. The new office has so much light, I honestly don’t know what to do with it.

In a group, the humblebrag is built to land twice: once as a complaint that earns sympathy, and once as a win that earns envy.

It usually does neither.

Across nine studies, researchers Ovul Sezer, Francesca Gino, and Michael Norton found that humblebraggers were rated as less likable and less competent than people who simply bragged, mostly because they came across as insincere. In one field test, 65 percent of students agreed to sign a petition after hearing a humblebrag, compared to 86 percent after a straightforward brag.

Just saying I got promoted and I’m thrilled would have gone over better. People can forgive pride. They have a harder time forgiving the disguise.

4. They check their phone while other people are talking

It starts as a quick glance. Then a scroll. Then a reply to a text while someone across the table is halfway through telling the group about their breakup.

The person on the phone thinks they’re still listening. They might even be catching most of it. But everyone else can see where their eyes are.

Researchers at the University of Kent found that as phone snubbing, or “phubbing,” increased, people rated the conversation as lower quality and the relationship as less satisfying. The biggest hit was to their sense of belonging.

In a group, one person on their phone doesn’t just check out. They announce to the speaker, in front of everyone, that something else was more interesting.

5. They keep talking long after the group has moved on

Talking a lot isn’t the problem on its own.

When psychologist Quinn Hirschi and her colleagues assigned strangers to speak for different shares of a one-on-one conversation, the people who spoke more were liked more. Hirschi was clear that this doesn’t mean people should “steamroll a conversational partner.”

Steamrolling is exactly what happens in groups. The story takes three detours. The point landed two minutes ago, and they’re making it again. Someone tries to jump in and gets a raised finger: hang on, I’m almost done.

You can watch it happen. People start nodding faster, then looking at their drinks, then looking at each other. The talker reads all that nodding as interest.

6. They finish other people’s sentences for them

Someone pauses to find the right word, and they fill it in. Sometimes they’re right. Often they’re a little off, and the speaker has to decide whether to correct them or just go along with it.

Most people go along with it. So the story ends up told the way the interrupter imagined it, not the way it actually happened.

From the inside, it feels like enthusiasm, like proof you’re so in sync that you can see where the thought is headed. From the outside, it reads as impatience. The message underneath is you’re taking too long.

Do it once, and nobody notices. Do it every time the same friend talks, and that friend starts talking less whenever you’re around.

7. They correct small details in someone else’s story

It was actually Thursday, not Friday. I think it was closer to forty people. That wasn’t Denver, it was Boulder.

None of these corrections change the story. They just stop it. The person telling it loses their rhythm, the punchline shows up late, and the laugh is smaller than it should have been.

The corrector usually believes they’re being helpful, or at least accurate. But accuracy about the day of the week was never what the group was there for.

When a detail actually matters, like the wrong date for a party everyone’s going to, people are grateful. When it doesn’t, the correction mostly tells the table who needed to be right.

8. They mostly talk to the most important person in the group

At a table of six, their body is angled toward one person: the boss, the host, the friend everyone is trying to impress. Their jokes are aimed there. Their eye contact stays there.

Everyone else becomes an audience for a two-person conversation they’re technically part of.

People pick up on this faster than almost anything else on this list, because it makes them feel ranked.

The newest person at the table, the partner who doesn’t know anyone, the quiet coworker at the end: they can all tell they’ve been sorted into the less useful pile.

People who are genuinely well-liked in groups tend to do the opposite. They pull in whoever has been quiet. You were there too, right? What did you think?

9. They make jokes at someone else’s expense and call it teasing

The joke gets a laugh, and the laugh is real. But it’s at one person’s expense, often the same person every time, and often about something they’re already a little sensitive about: their job, their dating life, how long it took them to finish school.

If the target doesn’t laugh along, the teaser has a line ready. Relax, I’m kidding. Now the person who got hurt is also the person who can’t take a joke.

Groups laugh at these jokes partly because laughing is easier than not laughing. But people remember who made them the punchline, and they remember who made them feel safe.

Being the funny one is a real social asset. Being funny at someone else’s expense, over and over, is how a person ends up very entertaining and not very trusted.