Why Humans Care So Much About Other People’s Opinions

Why do humans care so much about what other people think?

In this episode of The Human Experiment, Sharon unpacks one of the most human patterns of all: the way outside opinions can shape our confidence, choices, visibility, and self-expression.

Even when we logically know we should back ourselves, something inside us still reacts to judgment, criticism, silence, or feeling left out.

And there’s a reason for that.

Humans are wired for belonging.
We are wired to notice approval.
We are wired to care about social safety.

But when that wiring starts running the show, we can begin to dim ourselves, soften our opinions, hide our ambition, and wait for permission to fully be who we are.

This episode is a grounded look at belonging, visibility, school conditioning, social media, approval, and the quiet ways we abandon ourselves just to feel accepted.

In this episode we cover:
• Why humans care so much about other people’s opinions
• The deep wiring humans have for belonging and social safety
• Why rejection can still hit the nervous system so hard
• How social media amplifies comparison and self-doubt
• Why humans often dim themselves to stay accepted
• The school conditioning many adults still carry unconsciously
• Why visibility naturally creates opinions and projection
• The difference between approval and actual safety
• How people-pleasing quietly shapes identity
• Why confidence is not about never caring — it’s about building self-trust
• What full self-expression really asks of us
• Sharon’s practical Human Experiment for this week

Key insights:
• Humans are deeply wired for belonging, but that wiring can keep us small
• Social media is performance, not reality
• External validation is unstable and cannot hold your identity together
• Confidence is built through repeated moments of self-expression
• The more you trust yourself, the less outside opinions control you
• You do not need permission to become more fully expressed

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts
https://www.sharonfrancisco.com/podcast

Connect with me on LinkedIn and Facebook
Questions for the podcast? hello@sharonfrancisco.com

---
👉  Also: The Entrepreneurial Bookkeeper — grow your business without sacrificing your health: sharonfrancisco.com/program

Connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook.

Have a question for the podcast? Email hello@sharonfrancisco.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome back to the Sharon Francisco show. We are continuing with the Human Experiment series. Today we are going to talk about why humans care so much about the opinions from people they don't even know or like. All right, as I said, I a while ago I read a book around irrational human behavior. And ever since I haven't been able to stop noticing the strange contradictions humans live inside every day. And this one might be the strangest, but also the most dangerous for our own growth. Why do humans care so much about the opinions from people they don't even actually know or like? Sometimes they might not know them or they just might not like them. Because if you really stop and think about it, it's really quite bizarre. Humans will lose sleep. And I'm again, I'm not saying that I'm immune from this. Humans will lose sleep over judgment from people they they themselves don't admire. People they would never even ask advice from, people they don't even respect or even know. And yet, one comment, one look, one little bit of criticism, one feeling of exclusion, and suddenly humans question themselves completely. Even I know my previous episode that I did on Camera Shy, I know to begin with, a lot of people, when they first start putting themselves out there online, if they don't get any likes or they don't get shares or comments, that can feel like, oh, well, no one's even listening. It's not true. And it's not true because, and even if it is true, who cares? But I remember again, um, and I know I reference her a lot, but she changed my world. Jane Anderson is a personal branding coach. I worked with her in 2017, and she said something that's stuck with me ever since. She said, they're always watching, Sharon. They're always watching. And I love that because, you know, again, there are people watching. So the validation through getting likes and shares and what have you just isn't relevant. And you know what? I am noticing this everywhere. Businesses, relationships, social media, conferences, friendship groups, and families. Even successful, confident humans still seem deeply affected by whether they feel accepted or rejected. And I know, as I said, I notice this in myself as well. There are still moments where logically I know why do I even care what this person thinks? But emotionally, something still reacts inside me, which I think is important to admit, honestly, to ourselves, because sometimes successful people speak as though they magically have stopped caring overnight. Just be yourself, they say, just back yourself, just ignore what ignore the haters. Meanwhile, they've usually worked for years and years through that fear of judgment, insecurity, and self-doubt to get to where they've got to. And I know certainly for me, um, I've worked so hard. Again, you know, I started even with the video thing. I don't think I mentioned it in the previous episode, but I started by doing one minute of recording myself a day. At the first thing in the morning, I was recording myself. And I started this in 2017. Uh, I'd come into my office and I'd record just anything. I'd talk about the cat, the coffee, whatever. And I started, so you know, it's 2026 now. That's a long, long time to work on something. So it doesn't happen overnight. Humans are absolutely fascinating. All right, so humans are designed to belong. I think one of the biggest things humans underestimate is how deeply wired we are for belonging. Evolutionary psychologists talk about this part a lot. Thousands of years ago, if you got rejected from the tribe, that genuinely mattered. Like I was saying before. If we got kicked out from the tribe, it generally means death, or you know, you're no longer part of the tribe, so it's easier for you to die. Belonging actually meant survival, literally. So even though modern humans now live in complete, completely different conditions, the nervous system still reacts very strongly to this social rejection, which explains why humans can logically know something shouldn't matter, but emotionally still quite devastated by it. And I think women especially carry this deeply. The fear of not being good enough, the fear of not being attractive enough, the fear of not being successful enough, not being chosen, not being worthy, and the list absolutely goes on with that. And social media has amplified all of this massively, which is why, you know, you kind of feel like, why is it that why am I really resisting this? And why am I resisting putting myself out there and building my personal brand? This is why. It's real, it feels real. And it's not, it's just, you know, this nervous system thing that goes back to the day. If you kicked out of the tribe and people didn't like you, you died. And that's not the case these days. And, you know, humans aren't just comparing themselves locally anymore, they're comparing themselves with other people globally, which is a much bigger stage. And if you want to go back and listen to why that feels so insurmountable, is your one of my episodes I talked about, Dunbar's number. We're only meant to be with 150 people. 150 people is all that we can tend to handle with relationships and things like that. Whereas we're putting ourselves out there to billions of people, potentially. So they're comparing themselves globally to filtered lives, manufactured identities, carefully edited moments designed to hold attention. And I honestly think humans forget that. Social media isn't real. I'm going to say it again. Social media isn't real. It's performance, the whole darn lot of it. Humans are now consuming highly curated versions of each other all day long. And then we're wondering why we suddenly feel inadequate. And I think the thing is the things that I'm talking about as being genuine, authentic, and things like that. Of course, people are being that more online, but it's still being curated for us to either buy something or to take action or to whatever. So even though we're feeling like it's more authentic, there's still something behind it, of course, and we know that, which is psychologically wild when you think about it. So humans will dim themselves to stay accepted. This is the part I notice everywhere. Humans dim themselves to stay accepted, they soften opinions, their own opinions, they'll hide ambition, they'll downplay their intelligence, and they'll shrink their confidence and avoid visibility, all to avoid standing out too much. I think the school system has played a huge role in this. A lot of modern schooling was shaped during the Industrial Revolution, where society needed humans who could follow structure, show up on time, stay compliant, and fit into large systems effectively. I think many humans are still unconsciously carrying that conditioning now. Structure, compliance, uniformity, following instructions, being good little workers. Don't disrupt things and stay inside the lines. And I think many humans leave school still now, unconsciously waiting for permissions, permission to speak. Because think about it, when you get told, when you go to school, you're told to sit down, be quiet, put up your hand if you want to speak. When you want to go to the toilet, you've got to ask for permission. All of this was structured. So we were good little workers. And that just is now not what we want to do. We know that there's more to us and that we know that we've got ways that we can create our own personal brands that don't require us to be so rigid with our education. The other things are permission to lead, permission to create, permission to fully be themselves. And this is happening to this day, which is why so many adults still feel terrified being visible online or speaking up or being too much. And that's definitely what I have felt over the years for myself. It's just you're too much, Sharon. I love my too much as now, but it took me a long time to love it. And you see this same dynamic play out everywhere. Even at conferences and business events can sometimes feel like the schoolyard all over again. The cool group, the successful group, the insiders, the outsiders, the people trying to prove they belong. Humans never really stop wanting acceptance. It just becomes more sophisticated looking and we become more adult about it. The people who criticize others most are often struggling the most themselves. This is something, again, I've noticed over and over. The humans criticizing others most are often deeply uncomfortable with themselves because secure humans usually don't spend enormous amounts of energy tearing strangers apart. I think trolls and critics are often just sad human beings trying to figure themselves out too. That doesn't make the harmful behavior okay. I'm not condoning it, but it does make it more understandable so we can shake hands with it and not take it so personally if we do get a troll or some sort of hater. I heard this from somebody years ago and I loved it. And it's given me a lot of confidence to do the things that I do online and put myself out there. Um, and I wouldn't have ordinarily done it before. He said, if you haven't had your first hater yet, you're probably not trying hard enough. And I love that because it's like, oh, everyone gets haters, not just individuals that are saying something that's a bit controversial. Everyone gets haters. So, and weirdly, there's a truth to that, isn't there? Becoming visible, because visibility naturally creates opinions. Humans project things, their insecurities, their fears, their frustrations, their unmet ambitions. And once you start putting yourself out there publicly, you become a screen people can project onto. Which means if humans wait for universal approval before expressing themselves, they'll stay invisible and small forever and never get their message out there. So you just gotta forget the haters and know that if you've got a hater or two, that's probably a sign that you're getting yourself out there and you're really starting to get your opinion out to the world, which is awesome. Humans also confuse approval with safety. This is a deeper thing I keep thinking about of late. I think humans often confuse approval with safety. If people approve of us, then we are safe. If people reject us, then we're unsafe, which explains humans, which explains why humans can become addicted to external validation. The things that I spoke about before, like likes and shares and praise and recognition, attention, being chosen, being included. And I'll just do a little side note there. I know a lot of people, when I talk to them about getting themselves out there with strategic alliances and building their businesses, they're like, well, how many times do you have to sort of reconnect with people or reach out? Or, you know, if you're going for an award, like how many do I have to go for? You know what? You've just got to keep going until you start getting some outcomes. And how often you do that is no reflection on you. You just haven't had enough of a go to get the outcome you want. So it's really not allowing all that to really have an impact on you. If you want something, just keep going for it and till it actually happens. Because it's temporarily soothes something emotionally when we've got recognition, likes, praises, and being included, et cetera. But the problem is external validation is very unstable. And if your entire identity relies on that outside approval, humans end up shape shifting constantly, trying to keep everybody happy. And we know that's just a recipe for disaster. And it's people pleasing. Humans will sometimes sell their souls for acceptance. They'll stay quiet, they stay small, they stay agreeable, and they stay hidden because rejection feels terrifying and awful. But I think there's a deeper truth underneath all of this. Humans secretly want permission to fully be themselves. And confidence probably isn't never caring what people think. I actually don't think that's even realistic. I think confidence is slowly building enough self-trust that outside opinions stop controlling your whole identity and what you do and the actions you take. It's very different. So, what if full self-expression is actually the goal? This is what I want for everyone who's listening. The more I observe humans, the more I think confidence is something we can continually build, not something humans magically arrive at one day. It's self-soothing, it's self-awareness, it's pattern recognition, it's taking responsibility for our own growth and slowly but surely becoming more fully expressed over time. I think what humans avoid often shapes them more than what we step into. The things we keep postponing or avoiding or procrastinating on or shrinking back from, that usually points directly towards growth. And maybe that's why so many humans stay stuck. Because staying accepted often feels safer than becoming fully expressed. But the cost of caring too much about what everyone else's opinions are and what they think is absolutely enormous. You're not going to get any growth that way, and you're not going to have any feeling of expansion and real freedom. Just endless self-monitoring, self-checking. And honestly, what a tiring way to live. That's what you would have heard me talk about when I had that speaking coach. And I said, it's 30 or 40 times like normal of trying to do a video before I upload it. He said, Is that all? And I mean, you've just got to obviously get over that by continuing to put yourself out there. And it doesn't have to mean that if you're doing videos or putting yourself out there, that you have to put the first video up that you do. It's just practice makes perfect. And that's what we want to do, just practice, practice, practice until we feel okay. And again, it doesn't have to be perfect. It's just getting to ourselves to a stage where we go, you know what, I don't care. Just put it up. It doesn't matter. So this week's human experiment is I want you to start noticing this week, whose approval are you still unconsciously seeking? And more importantly, do you even genuine, genuinely admire the people you're giving that power to? And then what I want you to do, once you identify this, I want you to ask yourself, would I say, where, post, create, or pursue if I trusted myself slightly more? What would I say, wear, post, create, or pursue if I trusted myself slightly more, just a little bit more? Would I wear that beautiful, bright colored jacket that I've got in the cupboard or one that I've seen that I think, oh, should I buy it? The answer is yes, go get it. What would I post? Would I post something a little bit sassy, a little bit edgy? What would I create? What would I pursue? I've never ever considered myself an artist. Never. And I've just lately started taking up drawing. And I did it because I needed to channel some of my energy into a passion. So I chose drawing and I went to what like a $2 shop. I got some pencils and little notepad. I think the whole lot cost me about $12. And I just started looking at YouTube and practicing drawing. And turns out I'm not too bad. So then I went to Office Works and I got a whole bunch of really good quality pencils and pads, and I got some acrylic paints and I've started experimenting and it's fun. And I know now with confidence I'm building with my skill and I'm practicing and it's fun. I never would have done that previously because I would have thought, oh, I'm not a, I don't, Charlie, you're an artist, you're not an artist. Well, maybe I might be one day. Who knows? So trying to trust yourself with what you would say? What would I say, wear, post, create, or pursue if I trusted myself just a little bit more. Maybe humans don't become confident all at once. Maybe confidence is built through tiny repeated moments of self-expression. Tiny moments where we stop abandoning ourselves just to stay accepted. And honestly, maybe that's the real experiment. I would love to hear what your feedback was from trying this out. And again, please feel free to reach out and let me know how you went with this experiment. Until next time, talk to you soon. Bye.