Who Is the People-Pleaser?

Take our People Pleasing Test

Find a therapist near me

People pleasing and genuine care can look the same from the outside.

Overcorrecting toward boundaries can make relationships colder; care and generosity still matter.

The goal isn’t rigid rules. It’s slowing down enough to choose how we want to honor others and ourselves.

Adam Grant’s recent Substack, "The Truth About People Pleasing," got 1,000 likes for a reason: it offers a useful corrective to the ways many of us learn to go along to get along. But it also left me wanting a little more nuance.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to please people—in fact, it’s a great way to express a value of caring for others. What matters is slowing down enough to notice our motivations and remember that we are worth pleasing, too.

When caring for others is our default

Back when I was a pimply, insecure middle schooler, I used to bring all kinds of snacks on the bus to swim class. It wasn’t out of deep care for the other, more popular people on the bus; it was because I wanted to be liked.

People pleasing is tricky. Many people, especially women, are conditioned to subsume their preferences to others. As social creatures, it’s all too easy to become so concerned with what other people think that we lose track of where their preferences end........

© Psychology Today