No matter how confident you are in your wishes and life goals, do you sometimes change them based on other people’s opinions or social plans? Perhaps you’ve been eagerly looking forward to a relaxing night in, only to swap it for doing a favor for a friend. Or maybe you’ve been craving a visit to that trendy new restaurant you’ve been dying to try, only to change locations when no one else wanted to go.

Of course, life isn’t always black and white. Healthy relationships and social connections often require compromise, and never being flexible could harm your friendships and well-being. But where do you draw the line? When does people-pleasing become unpleasant?

Understanding the balance between self-care and social harmony is key to building emotional resilience and setting healthy boundaries. Prioritizing your needs doesn’t mean neglecting others — it means cultivating a life that aligns with your values, reduces stress, and enhances your overall well-being.

Agreeableness has often been reported to lead to several advantages, such as higher-quality friendships, better academic and career performance, successful parenting, and better health. And on top of that, it is even expected! But while all the social pressure and many articles almost promote people-pleasing, I want to highlight the negative effects excessive people-pleasing might have. It has been linked to psychological distress, relationship difficulties, and even difficulty in knowing oneself.

But let’s start at the beginning: the development of people-pleasing. The emergence of people-pleasing can have many reasons; some of the following have been suggested:

• A possible response to early family dynamics. Specifically, egoistic parents or siblings (Rappoport, 2005). People in these situations have been called “Conarcissistic”, as a result of their attempt to get along with narcissistic parents (or other close people in their life). It can manifest in working hard to please others, deferring to others’ opinions, worrying about how others think and feel about them, depression and anxiety, difficulty in knowing their own views, and taking on the blame for interpersonal problems. The fear of being seen as selfish has been reported as well.
• Drive to avoid interpersonal conflict in social situations (胡珍, 2016).
• Cultural expectations and gender roles (Jensen-Campbell, 2010), with women being especially susceptible to people-pleasing

However, while these studies have found some evidence for the emergence of people-pleasing behaviour, I want to point out that there is not much research on the topic, and these studies can only be seen as a first guideline.

In light of all this information, we might be confused as to why we do it in the first place. It doesn’t seem too helpful so far, does it? Well, it turns out that people-pleasing is deeply rooted in our evolution as humans. There are several theories as to the strongest factors, but two of the most prominent ones are social cohesion & group survival as well as the adaption to social hierarchies in groups. Group cohesion and cooperative behaviour are crucial for early human survival as we were stronger in groups. Therefore, characteristics that helped a group stick together were useful and carried forward (Obstacles to expanding). Another researcher, Morris (2011), supported this view by highlighting the importance of compassion and cooperation for non-relatives due to higher survival advantages. Additionally, groups of certain sizes needed a system to work well together. Evidence has found that people tend to voluntarily cooperate if treated fairly by others and to punish noncooperators in a group setting (Fehr et al., 2002). The importance of leaders in a group has also been researched, and it has been found that some people are more sensitive than others to the traits of leaders (Evolutionary theory and political). This might be another additional explanation for the differences in people-pleasing behaviour between persons. Like anything in psychology – it is a mix of biology and the environment!

Nevertheless, psychological research does present a nuanced picture of the impact people-pleasing and related behaviour can have on personal well-being. The potential benefits or risks seem to largely depend on the degree and context of the behaviour, as agreeableness can lead to improved career performance but can lead to potential difficulties and psychological issues if not in check.

Exercises for reflecting and changing

Many emotions we feel come from our thoughts, either thoughts about something in the past, thoughts of our interpretation of our current situation, or thoughts of what might happen. When struggling with excessive people-pleasing behaviour, it is crucial to remember that the reaction we might be afraid of might be wrong. Or maybe we don’t even have a clear fear in mind; it’s simply an uncomfortable feeling that leads us to avoid confrontation. In both cases, shifting your mindset can be transformative. Practicing self-awareness, building self-confidence, and learning effective communication skills can help you change from people-pleasing patterns to cultivating healthier relationships. Prioritizing your personal growth and mental wellness empowers you to set boundaries, reduce anxiety, and embrace authenticity in your interactions.

Cognitive behavioral approach: Cognitive restructuring

Cognitive restructuring is based on the idea of asking questions to encourage you to think more about and for yourself – this is also referred to as the Socratic approach. Example questions might be:

• What am I worried about?
• What do I think will happen?
• What will I do if that does happen?
• What does that matter?

Boundary-setting techniques

Other proven important exercises are boundary-setting techniques. These can be done in a variety of ways and are all about clarifying your inner wishes – just as the title suggests. Ways for practising this might be:

• Writing down wishes or actions that are important to you. The ones that you do not want to compromise on. Then go further: did you abandon one of them for someone else when you didn’t really want to? Write down how it made you feel at that moment. Then go through the whole situation and imagine how it would have played out if you had stuck to your boundaries. Here’s a little tip: You can fill this out in a handy worksheet right here.
• Practice some situations that you know are coming up. Do you have a salary negotiation? A difficult talk with a loved one? Practise it beforehand and clarify to yourself how you can bring your wishes across.

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References

Foto by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

• Evolutionary Theory and Political Leadership: Why Certain People Do Not Trust Decision Makers. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Evolutionary-Theory-and-Political-Leadership%3AWhy-Do/4ea209d6673038969774286394c1649d6e6fa607
• Kristensson, P. (2021). Transforming people’s lives and world for the better : The new purpose of marketing. In Business Transformation for a Sustainable Future (pp. 110–119). Retrieved from https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-88036
• 胡珍 (2016). “老好人”要勇敢说“不”
• A. Rappoport (2005). Co-Narcissism : How We Accommodate to Narcissistic Parents
• N. Hudson (2022). Lighten the Darkness: Personality Interventions Targeting Agreeableness Also Reduce Participants’ Levels of the Dark Triad. Journal of Personality
• L. Jensen‐Campbell, Jennifer M. Knack, H. L. Gómez (2010). The Psychology of Nice People
• Morris, C. E. (2011). Exploring the necessity of others in human evolution. Journal of Social Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology, 5(4), 293–295. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0099255
• Caporael, L. R. (1991). Obstacles to expanding human evolutionary theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14(4), 750–753. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x00072332
• Fehr, E., Fischbacher, U., & Gächter, S. (2002). Strong reciprocity, human cooperation, and the enforcement of social norms. Human Nature, 13(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-002-1012-7