Psychological Facts#9 - The Spotlight Effect This effect states that people tend to believe that others notice them as soon as they screw up than they actually do. The belief that people are constantly scrutinising your behaviour and the resultant paranoia and self-doubt that arises from, is called the spotlight effect. Even if you do something embarrassing, like spilling a drink down your front or falling flat on your face, other people dont notice/criticise you as much as you think they do. In an experiment conducted by Thomas Gilovich et al, test subjects were made to wear embarrassing T-shirts and asked to estimate how many people giggled about it behind their back. The subjects overestimated the number of people they thought had observed their clothing- their predictions were twice as big as the actual number. So what can you learn from this? Take a deep breath and look around. You are surrounded by hundreds and thousands of people who are more or less just like you. Nobody is paying specific attention to you, waiting for you to slip up so that they can make fun of you. Get over it.This also means that the positive things you do will be forgotten over time, but oh well...the spotlight doesnt shine on any of us no matter what we do.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 16:55:29 +0000