ElysianState

Hello.

I wanted to talk about something I mentioned earlier as the “invisible audience”. There’s another term for it: The Spotlight Effect. To summarize it, the Spotlight Effect is the tendency to believe that we are the center of other’s attention, despite this almost never being the case. We can go back to Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Husted Medvec, and Kenneth Savitsky, psychologists who coined the term first appearing in the journal “Current Directions in Psychological Science” in 1999. The term originated from studies showing that people often felt overtly self-conscious, causing them to believe they were more visible or noticeable than they actually were.

CHANGING PERSPECTIVE

I admitted before that this was something that I found myself dealing with, and I do not doubt that out of the total number of people reading this, at least half would have felt the same. But why does this happen? The answer can be tied to egocentric bias. After all, we live in our own heads.

The only thoughts that we are constantly aware of are our own, in addition to our emotions and actions. Since we intensely have tabs on every little thing we feel or do, it’s easy to believe that others view or judge us in the same way. It doesn’t help that we’re naturally wired to monitor our social standing and interactions within a group to help us survive (a trait passed on from our ancestors). This focus can make us even more self-conscious than would normally be required (genes and traits that were passed on from our ancestors are usually designed to have benefitted them in their situations, as while such a self-conscious view of ourselves is no longer necessary today, it may have been beneficial in the past).

Our comfort in watching ourselves at all times makes us believe that others do it to us too.

EVERYDAY SPOTLIGHTS

Let’s take a look at a semi-well known experiment, the “Barry Manilow T-shirt Study”. At the time of the study, Manilow was an outdated figure who could be seen as “embarrassing” to endorse at the time. Participants in the study were given a shirt with his face on it and were told to walk into a room. Those wearing the shirt estimated that about half of the people in the room would notice the shirt, but data showed that only a quarter actually noticed. Such a large discrepancy between what we expected and what actually happened demonstrated a clear overestimation of the thoughts of others. I can say the same while imagining making a mistake in the classroom while giving a presentation-while I normally would expect for everyone listening to judge mistakes, in reality most people would likely not notice or not care (as I would also feel while listening).

If you aren’t noticing this in the classroom or in a group of people, the effect does go beyond just regular social groups. It’s not uncommon to feel self-conscious about what you’re wearing in public, even in an area like a city where you’d see thousands of people in a day just by walking around. Or imagine waking up and obsessing over small imperfections about your hair in the mirror, believing everyone who walks by you will notice. The odds are, unless you bring it up yourself, others will not pay nearly as much attention to you as you’re afraid of. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in person, either: posting online in social media can also trigger this effect where you may believe that any post you make will be scrutinized by all that see it. In reality, most will casually scroll past it without giving too much analysis.

EXIT STAGE LEFT

It goes without saying that there are many negative side effects correlated with these feelings. Anxiety, self-doubt, self-criticism, and reduced authenticity amongst others can bode harmful to our mental health. More than anything, our self-esteem is affected, caused by the weight of pressure not just from yourself, but from the belief that others judge you as well. There are ways to help counter the spotlight effect. First and foremost is self-compassion, which directly blocks other negative emotions that you cause yourself.

It’s critical to understand your own authenticity when trying to surpass these issues. Another useful method is to try “Cognitive Reframing”, where you remind yourself that people often think alike. Generally, you won’t be judging everything else someone else does. It’s very likely that they’re thinking the same way as you, with no time to worry about what you’re doing. Trying to shift your perspective like this is an important step towards understanding the mind’s over-perception of others.

I thought it would be nice to write about this since I didn’t get to go into as much detail as I wanted to before. It’s really important to understand the spotlight effect and the self-consciousness that it causes. It really helps to know that people aren’t watching as closely as you’d think-knowing this is only going to lead to greater authenticity and freedom in your actions.