You already know you like the people in your life. You think about them, you root for them, you notice when something good happens to them and feel a little lift in your chest. Most of those people have no idea.
That’s not a personal failing. It’s a documented psychological phenomenon. The three magic phrases that make you more likable aren’t about performing enthusiasm or memorizing scripts. They work because they do something far simpler: they say out loud what was already true.
Most of us move through conversations assuming that the warmth we feel is somehow radiating off us, legible to everyone in the room. We assume the person across from us knows we find them interesting, that we enjoyed that last dinner, that we’ve thought about them since. They don’t. Not because we’re bad at connecting, but because the human brain is genuinely terrible at broadcasting its own interior states.
The Psychological Blind Spot Nobody Talks About
Behavioral researcher Vanessa Van Edwards, founder of Science of People, built her three phrases specifically around what psychologists call signal amplification bias: the idea that even when you genuinely like someone, or enjoy an interaction, they probably don’t realize it. People tend to overestimate how much their feelings come across to others.
“We think our signals are obvious,” Van Edwards has said. “If we like someone or if we’re having a good time, we think, ‘Oh, they for sure know it.’ They don’t.”
This is not a small gap. Research on interpersonal warmth supports the importance of explicit positive communication. Warmth is the primary barometer people use when meeting someone new, as it signals whether or not they can be trusted. Warmth you feel internally but don’t express doesn’t register for the other person.
Van Edwards shared her framework in an interview with Steven Bartlett on the Diary of a CEO podcast, and the response was significant enough that Fortune covered it in October 2025. The Fortune piece focused on how the phrases work by counteracting signal amplification bias — the gap between the warmth people feel and the warmth others actually perceive.
The First Phrase: “I Was Just Thinking of You”
Van Edwards calls this the most powerful of her three phrases. When used genuinely, “I was just thinking of you” is among the most disarming things one person can say to another.
You probably do think about the people in your life fairly regularly. You hear a song and think of your college roommate. You read something and think of your sister. You walk past a restaurant and think of a friend you haven’t called in months. You just never say it. The thought completes its little loop and disappears, while the other person goes about their day with no idea they crossed your mind.
Saying “I was just thinking of you” doesn’t require an occasion. It doesn’t need to be followed by a profound statement. The sentence itself is the point. It tells someone they exist in your mental space when there was no external reason for them to.
The phrase needs to be real to work. If you weren’t thinking of them, it reads as a script, and people sense that immediately. But if you were, and most of us are thinking of our people far more often than we ever let on, it costs almost nothing to say it.
The Second Phrase: “You’re Always So..”
Van Edwards is direct about why this phrase matters: “If you’re with someone and you’re impressed by them or they’re interesting or they’re funny, say, ‘You always make me laugh. You’re always so interesting,’ or ‘You’re always so great in interviews.’ Giving them a label that is a positive label is the best gift you can give someone, because it’s fighting that signal amplification bias.”
The construction “you’re always so” does something specific that a regular compliment doesn’t. A compliment is about a moment: “that was a great point.” A positive label is about identity: “you’re always so sharp in these conversations.” One is a one-time acknowledgment. The other tells someone who they are, in your eyes, a consistent truth you’ve actually noticed, not a single observation offered in passing.
This is also one of the magic phrases that make you more likable in contexts where likability actually has real stakes: job reviews, difficult family dynamics, friendships that have gotten a little dry. Naming what you genuinely admire about someone, and doing it in the present tense as a consistent truth rather than a single observation, is a form of attention that most people almost never receive.
The caveat is the word “always.” Don’t use it for something that isn’t actually true. If you say “you’re always so calm under pressure” to someone who just watched themselves spiral in a meeting, the phrase reads as a script rather than a compliment. Use it when the thing you’re naming is genuinely the pattern you’ve noticed. The specificity is what makes it stick.
The Third Phrase: “Last Time We Talked, You Mentioned..”
Of the three phrases, this one does the most heavy lifting per syllable. It requires the most investment, actual memory, actual attention, and it delivers the most outsized return.
Van Edwards has said that referencing something the person was genuinely excited about is incredibly important in getting them to like you. “We are so honored when we get brain space, that you remembered and you’re going to bring it up,” she explained.
The social math here is simple. Most people assume that what they said in a conversation two weeks ago evaporated the moment they left the room. When someone circles back to it, unprompted, it signals something close to being treasured. It says: I was listening. I kept it. It mattered enough to stay with me.
This phrase works across contexts in ways that are easy to underestimate. In friendships, it says you’re present. In professional relationships, it says you’re attentive in a way most people aren’t. In family dynamics, especially complicated ones, it can cut through years of superficial interaction in a single sentence. When your mom mentions she’s been stressed about a doctor’s appointment and you call three days later to ask how it went, you have just communicated more warmth than a dozen nice dinners would.
The phrase also doesn’t require you to remember everything. It requires you to remember one thing and to bring it back up. One specific detail, one follow-up, one small signal that the other person’s experience didn’t disappear into the air the moment they stopped speaking.
Why These Phrases Work When Generic Niceness Doesn’t
The reason standard pleasantries don’t build connection the way these three phrases do comes down to the difference between ambient warmth and directed attention. Most of us are reasonably warm. We say “great to see you,” we smile, we ask how things are going. None of that is bad. But it’s also not targeted. It doesn’t settle on any particular quality of the person in front of us, any specific memory, any real evidence that we’ve been paying attention.
Harvard researchers examined more than 300 online and in-person conversations between people getting to know each other, and their findings, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, show that those who asked more questions during a conversation, specifically follow-up questions, were perceived as more likable both online and in person. The follow-up question is the active version of “last time we talked, you mentioned.” Both of them signal the same thing: I was actually here, and I came back.
These phrases don’t perform confidence. They don’t require you to be the funniest person at the table, the most polished speaker, or the one with the best stories. Science of People identifies each of Van Edwards’ phrases as backed by peer-reviewed research and designed to make others feel seen, valued, and remembered. The common thread through all three is making the other person the point of the interaction, not yourself.
That runs counter to how a lot of people think about being likable. The instinct, especially in social situations that feel high-stakes, is to focus on projecting something impressive, to be interesting, to be entertaining, to fill the silence with something worth hearing. The research consistently suggests this is the wrong direction. The people who are most remembered, most liked, most sought out are the ones in whose presence you felt like you mattered. That’s not charisma in the traditional sense. It’s a form of generosity.
For anyone thinking about how social dynamics ripple into the day-to-day fabric of family and parenting, the same traits that make people thoughtful and perceptive can sometimes get in the way of the simpler, warmer signals others need. Highly intelligent people often overthink what should be straightforward.
The Reason Authenticity Is Non-Negotiable Here
These phrases have to come from the heart. They have to be genuine and open.
Phrases stripped of genuine feeling are detectable. Not always consciously, most people can’t tell you why a compliment felt hollow or why a question felt like a prompt rather than real interest. But they feel it. The phrases above are not magic because they’re clever constructions. They’re magic phrases that make you more likable because they express things that are already true, things you already feel but have been consistently failing to say out loud.
There is an entire relationship you are already conducting inside your own head, one full of warmth and care and small remembered details, that the other people in that relationship know almost nothing about. These three phrases are just doors. You’re not inventing anything. You’re finally letting some of it out.
Disclaimer: This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and is for information only. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions about your medical condition and/or current medication. Do not disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking advice or treatment because of something you have read here.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.