People Pleasing: Definition, Quotes, & Psychology

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
People pleasing is the act of making others happy to avoid conflict or negative feelings – even if you don’t like what you’re doing. What does psychology research have to say about this behavior?
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If you listen closely to what people are saying, if you watch their nonverbal behaviors, it can be easy to know what they want, what they care about. This is my experience, at least, and it is a big part of who I am and why I like being a therapist. While I think reading other people and understanding them is an invaluable skill, it comes with a major risk: that of choosing to give those people what they want when it’s not the right thing to do.
I have caught myself, without a second thought, giving people – both friends and clients – what they want. Where’s the harm in that, you ask? Here are two big reasons. First, sometimes giving people what they want means I don’t get what I need. That leaves me resentful and liable to behave passive-aggressively. Second, what we want in a particular moment may not actually be good for us. Think of a parent who can’t stand the sound of their child’s wailing and succumbs to their pleading for a second dessert.
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Okay, so is this behavior, which we can call people pleasing, all bad? What makes some of us people pleasers? And what can we do about it? Let’s see what the research says.
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What Is People Pleasing? (A Definition)

People pleasing is changing our own behavior to make other people happy (Briggs et al., 1980). Before going further, I want to start with a disclaimer. We can change our behavior for other people’s sake in a way that is genuinely caring and selfless. That is not what people pleasing is, however. People pleasing is putting other’s needs and wants before our own needs and well-being (Tariq et al., 2021).
 
When we people please, it is often because we are operating from some kind of belief about how the other person’s needs matter more than our needs do. Or, we might be trying to avoid a negative interaction altogether. In this case, people pleasing is an act of manipulating the situation to minimize conflict between people. But this likely comes at a cost, as we have not done the hard work of finding a compromise that meets everybody’s needs in the situation.

Opposite of People Pleasing

People pleasing seems to be more common among people who highly value having positive social interactions and may be more dependent on others (Robins et al., 1994). Accordingly, the opposite of people pleasing is to act to protect one’s own self-interest. Instead of seeking the approval or affection of others, one prioritizes independence and getting what one wants. For example, imagine a couple at the grocery store, discussing what to buy to cook for dinner that week. A person given to people pleasing might simply agree with whatever their partner recommends. A person given to the opposite might insist only on cooking certain things, and might even threaten to eat out on their own if their partner doesn’t yield on the issue.
 
As you might guess, being a strong people pleaser or never compromising on what you want are both related to problems socializing with others and with mental health issues (Robins et al., 1994). Being too rigid in either direction makes it hard for the needs of everybody in the situation to get met.

People Pleasing Personality

A person who people pleases a lot is likely high in the trait of sociotropy (Robins et al., 1994). This is a trait characterized by a strong desire for conflict-free relationships and getting the approval of others (Beck et al., 1983). Research tells us that people high in sociotropy are also high in the personality traits of agreeableness and neuroticism (Bagby et al., 2001).
 
That last finding makes a lot of sense to me – I think it gets at the two key ingredients in people pleasing. First, these is the tendency towards niceness and desire for harmony with others (a.k.a., agreeableness). If you combine this with a tendency to feel negative emotions and difficulty moving through those emotions (a.k.a., neuroticism), you get a person who will have a very hard time displeasing others.

Examples of People Pleasing

Examples of people pleasing behaviors run the gamut from the mundane to the very risky. People pleasing can look like withholding your opinion about something, apologizing for behaviors that did not cause any harm or were completely unintentional, and going the extra distance to help others feel uncomfortable, even if it inconveniences you. On the more potentially harmful side, people pleasing can look like going along with risky or dangerous behaviors because friends want you to or letting yourself be bullied or humiliated because you would rather be upset internally than have a conflict with a friend or family member.
 
People pleasing is not limited to interactions where a person explicitly asks for or wants something. People may also people please by downplaying their strengths and underperforming academically, so as not to upset other people who want to feel successful and smart (Exline et al., 2012). One study suggests they are more likely to like other people’s social media posts than the average person (Lee et al., 2016). They may even develop the symptoms of eating disorders out of a desire not to upset anyone with their bodily appearance (Narduzzi & Jackson, 2002).

What Makes a Person a People Pleaser?

To put it simply, when a person people pleases, it is because they think they have to. One of the most famous psychologists of the twentieth century, Aaron Beck, said that we people please because we have overly rigid and unrealistic expectations for social interactions (Beck, 1983). People pleasers are overly invested in getting acceptance from other people, and they see that acceptance as only coming from positive social interactions. At the same time, they experience negative social interactions as very upsetting and may think that they simply can’t handle that kind of conflict. For people who people please regularly, it is only through getting widespread, continuous approval from others that they will feel safe and liked (Beck, 1983).
 
Beck’s characterization of people pleasers seems very accurate to me, as I identify as something of a “people-pleaser in recovery”. My ability to read other people’s needs made me and empathize with them can make it very hard for me to see other people upset – especially when I think I know what will make them feel better. It has taken a lot of self-reflection and work on personal growth to recognize the points I made in the introduction: that people pleasing often means letting myself down or letting them avoid experiences they probably need to have for their own personal growth.

People Pleasing Causes ​
Okay, so how did I, and people like me, end up people pleasers? Two reasons that come to mind are attachment styles and how we are socialized. People who are insecurely attached – especially those that fear being rejected by other people – tend to avoid potential rejection by many methods, including people pleasing (Set, 2019). And people who have been socialized to prioritize other people’s needs will tend to people please more. This is why – did you guess it? – women tend to have people pleasing characteristics more often than men, at least in Western cultures (Yang & Girgus, 2019). Interestingly, in more collectivistic cultures, where everybody is socialized to value relational harmony, this gender difference is much smaller.

People Pleasing & Trauma

Some research suggests that people who have experienced trauma are more likely to engage in people pleasing (or its opposite) (Kolts et al., 2004). People pleasing may help people avoid re-experiencing trauma, such as by avoiding interpersonal conflicts that are upsetting or reminiscent of traumatic events. While this helps the people with trauma not get upset in the moment, it may also maintain their traumatic stress, because they may not learn how to handle situations where their own mental health needs come into conflict with other people’s needs.

People Pleasing & Anxiety

People high in sociotropy – that collection of characteristics that lends itself to people pleasing – tend to experience higher levels of anxiety – and depression, too (Fresco et al., 2001). This seems pretty reasonable to me: if you were always thinking about how to keep other people happy – something that you cannot actually control no matter how hard you or anyone else tries – then you would be facing a high degree of uncertainty, and probably not feeling too good about it!
 
People Pleasing & Depression
​Many people with depression recognize that they are engaging in people pleasing behaviors and can even point to ways that it is negatively impacting their well-being (Feely et al., 2007). But this can be a hard pattern to stop: after all, people with depression often have a negative view of themselves, and may not seem themselves as worthy of being happy. If your own happiness isn’t that important, then it’s easier to put other people’s happiness before yours.

Is People Pleasing a Coping Mechanism?

People pleasing is one technique people use to try to cope with stress and interpersonal conflict. People high in sociotropy typically experience conflict and stressful life events as more upsetting than people low in this trait (Dasch et al., 2008), so they accordingly try to cope by resolving the conflict. As you have probably observed yourself, people pleasing definitely can resolve a conflict in the moment, but it often leaves the people pleaser unsatisfied on some fundamental level.

Is People Pleasing Manipulation?

People pleasing is an act of self-sacrifice for the sake of maintaining a relationship. Since it involves hiding one’s own feelings or needs and trying to change how the other person is feeling, it can be considered an act of manipulation. (It pains me to say this, knowing how often I’ve done it myself, but here we are.)
 
It is sadder still to say that people pleasing is truly only a short-term solution and often not that effective. Research tells us that people who are around chronic people pleasers can find their self-sacrificing to be tiresome and frustrating, which may actually create more distance in the relationship (Sun et al., 2022; Vangelisti, 2011) – the exact opposite of what the people pleaser wanted. Also, self-sacrificing with the goal of preserving a relationship and avoiding rejection can lower the people pleaser’s satisfaction with the relationship, too (Wagoner, 2014). It makes a big difference whether I pick up a friend’s prescription out of a sense of obligation, or because I could hear how tired they were on the phone and had empathy for them.

How to Stop People Pleasing

Here are several ways to stop people pleasing. First, you can work – probably with the help of a therapist – to change your perceptions of both your own needs and other people’s needs. If their needs do not seem as threatening, and you can acknowledge the importance of your own needs, you will be find it less upsetting when everyone’s needs come into conflict (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2012).
 
Second, you can take inspiration from one of my favorite books, which is called No More Mr. Nice Guy. Don’t let the title mislead you – what this book really advocates is for people to acknowledge and voice their own needs, instead of just taking care of other people’s needs and hoping that this service will be returned (Glover & Glover, 2004). 

To stop people pleasing, we can identify healthy boundaries that will get our needs met, put ourselves first when it truly matters, and practice proactive self-care so we are well-resourced when around others. For example, if I’m going to spend the whole day with a friend, it’s easier for me to not people please if I’ve already thought about what I do and don’t want to do, have a firm plan for when hanging out ends, and have brought plenty of snacks to keep my energy levels up.
 
For more thoughts, presented in a light-hearted and humorous way, about how to change one’s people pleasing ways, I recommend watching this video:

Video: Why People Pleasing is Hurting You

Articles Related to People Pleasing

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Books Related to People Pleasing

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on People Pleasing

I remember that people pleasing used to be a major motivator for me when I was a young student. Like many people who work hard to please others, I can attribute some of my success to that desire (Miller et al., 1996). But hard work is only sustainable if it’s really for me, just like our relationships don’t fulfill our needs if we fill them with people pleasing behaviors. I hope you now have a better sense of why you or people around you engage in people pleasing and how stepping away from this behavior may increase the quality of your life and relationships.

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