PsychologyAugust 21, 2026

miscalibration

mis-kal-uh-BRAY-shun

Definition

The act or state of being incorrectly adjusted or failing to align accurately with reality.

Etymology

Derived from the prefix 'mis-' meaning 'wrongly' and 'calibration,' which originates from the French 'calibre' and refers to the process of adjusting an instrument to a standard scale.

In the news

In the article, the researchers found that compliment givers consistently experienced a miscalibration, where their predictions of a recipient's feelings did not align with the recipient's actual positive experience.

People avoid giving compliments because they expect an awkward exchange, but experiments found recipients felt better and less uncomfortable than the giver predicted — and the person offering the compliment also walked away in a better mood, meaning

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