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The Spotlight Effect

The spotlight effect is the phenomenon in which individuals believe other people are scrutinizing them when in fact they are not. It is the tendency to overestimate the extent in which others around someone notices aspects of their appearance or behavior and to what extent they are aware of it. The spotlight effect can lead people to feeling of paranoia and self-doubt. This also makes people believe that they will be judged harshly based on their failures. The spotlight effect also relates to how people overestimate attention focused on them. Realistically, people don't pay as much attention as you think they do. (Gilovich 2000)

Importance
The importance of the Spotlight Effect is to allow people to understand that even during embarrassing moments; others around you are not judging your actions as harshly as you think they are. Eventually when people start to understand the concept of this phenomenon, they will feel more comfortable with themselves when they're caught in a blunder surrounded by people. (Denton 2005)

History
The spot light effect was named by Thomas Gilocich, a Ph.D. from Cornell University and his colleagues, Victoria Medvec and Kenneth Savitsky. Its first appearance in a journal was in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology vol. 78 in 2000. Prior to the naming of the spotlight effect there has been research done that showed the existence of the phenomenon. One of these studies include M. Ross and Sicolys work showing that when doing group work an individual will rate themselves higher on how much work they contributed than compared to other group members. (Gilovich 2000)

Introducing the phenomenon
In the spotlight effect there are a few main phenomenons that are introduced. The first phenomenon is called "anchoring and adjustment". This is where our experiences and our behaviors are anchored in our minds and we have trouble adjusting to the behaviors. We have troubles adjusting to the fact that others may not notice our behaviors that we may think are embarrassing. Sometimes we take a few extra minutes to take what others may see into perspective before walking into a situation. This is our adjustment phase. The second phenomenon introduced in the spotlight effect is called the naive realism phenomena. Naive realism is where someone believes that everything they think and believe in is the way that everyone else around them thinks. Just because parts of our behavior are embarrassing to us, does not mean that others will notice them and think that they are embarrassing. A third phenomenon is called self-as target bias. This is exactly what it sounds like. It's where someone believes that events are disproportionately directed towards them. For example, let's say you had an assignment due in class and you did not prepare as well as you should have. You start to freak out and think that just because you did not prepare as well as you should have, the teacher is going to call on you for answers. (McConnell 2009)

The Spotlight Effect in Social Judgment: An Egocentric Bias in Estimates of the Salience of One's Own Actions and Appearance.
This article was written by Thomas Gilocich et al and was the first to coin the term "The spotlight effect". Researchers hypothesized that participants would overestimate the extent people notice things about them in aspects of appearance and group work. The article was broken down into five studies. (Gilovich 2000)


 * Study 1: The hypothesis in this study was that individuals wearing an embarrassing shirt would feel that others around them would notice the shirt. Participant would put on a shirt with Barry Manilow on it and walk into a room with other participants, and then leave the room. The participant wearing the shirt was asked how many people in the room noticed what was on the shirt and who was on it. The results of the first study were that the participant wearing the shirt overestimated the extent in which people noticed the shirt predicting 48% of people noticed. However only 22% of observers did. This shows evidence for the existence of the spotlight effect, and that people feel others around them notice embarrassing things about themselves. (Gilovich 2000)


 * Study 2: The hypothesis of this study was that the spotlight effect exists in non-embarrassing situations as well as embarrassing. It was predicted that individuals would overestimate people noticing the shirt they wore when the shirt was considered popular in the same settings as the first study.. Participants wore a shirt of Bob Marley, Jerry Seinfeld, or Martin Luther King Jr. on it. It was found that participants wearing the popular shirt overestimated the amount of people noticing the shirt thus showing support for spotlight effect in non-embarrassing situations also. (Gilovich 2000)


 * Study 3: The hypothesis of this study was that the participants would overestimate the extent in which they felt they contributed to the group as compared to the others in the group. Groups were made and were told to discuss a problem. Then after the discussion each participant ranked themselves aspects of how much they contributed. They ranked themselves as well as everyone in the group. The results showed that the participants would overrate themselves on positive aspects based on the groups evaluation of them, and underrate themselves on negative aspects based on the group evaluation. This study supports the idea of the spotlight effect existing in social situations. (Gilovich 2000)


 * Study 4: The hypothesis of this study was that individuals wearing an embarrassing shirt would over think why others noticed the embarrassing. The observers were told to just look up briefly when the participant wearing the embarrassing shirt entered the room. When later asked how many people noticed the shirt and why the participant would explain that everyone in the room looked at the shirt and stared at it for some time. This supports the hypothesis that people over think embarrassing situations because the participants believed the group looked at the shirt for quite some time but in actuality they only looked in the direction of the person for a slight moment in time. (Gilovich 2000)


 * Study 5: The hypothesis of this study was that people experience the spotlight effect less when there is a delay in action. It was predicted that the participants would feel that less people notice the embarrassing shirt when they wore it for a moderate amount of time before entering the room. When asked how many people do you think noticed the shirt it was shown that participants who waited after putting on the shirt felt less people noticed it than the condition without delay. This study shows support that delay in action reduces the extent of the spotlight effect. (Gilovich 2000)

The Spotlight Effect Revisited: Overestimating the Manifest Variability of Our Actions and Appearance

 * In this article researchers predicted that participants would anticipate others' ratings. Participants were asked to rate themselves and others based on physical appearance during a seminar. The question they were asked was to rate themselves and others based on how the other members of the class would rate you. After collecting the questionnaire, results show that participants overestimated how variable their day to day appearance would seem to their classmates. They thought they would be rated more negatively than they actually were. This article supports the hypothesis because the participants did anticipate others' ratings when taking in consideration their own personal appearance. (Gilovich 2001)

Empathy Neglect: Reconciling the Spotlight Effect and the Correspondence Bias
Introduction: This article explains the Spotlight Effect in four different studies. All participants in these studies were undergraduates from Cornell University. (Epley 2002)


 * Study 1: In this study, randomly assigned participants observed other participants solving problems. Those observers who were informed of the answers before the participants answered the questions rated solvers to be less intelligent and creative than observers who did not know the answers. Solvers in this study overestimated how harshly they would be judged. (Epley 2002)


 * Study 2: Questioners developed 10 questions for the Contestant to answer. Inside and Outside observers watched the experiment. With participants in the room, the experimenter said aloud how many questions were answered correctly. Outside observers rated the Contestant to be less intelligent, just like in study one. In this experiment, contestants overestimated how harshly other participants were going to judge them. (Epley 2002)


 * Study 3: This experiment consisted of a participant chewing 2-5 pieces of gum while trying to sing the Star Spangled Banner. The inside observer knew the singer was chewing gum and watched the performance. Outside observers listened to a recording of the participant singing the Star Spangled Banner. It was predicted that observers who knew the participant was chewing gum while singing would show more empathy. Participants underestimated the impact of empathy in this study. (Epley 2002)


 * Study 4: 50 participants imagined they were actors in studies 1, 2, and 3. Participants were then asked to estimate how much they would be judged by observers during these studies. Overall, when caught doing an embarrassing act, people tend to overestimate how empathetic people are. (Epley 2002)

Summary

These studies have illustrated that people underestimate how others will react to embarrassing moments when the behavior is observed. Participants who were allowed to empathize were more charitable in their initial judgments. When participants were able to imagine being in studies 1 and 2, they were less judgmental on intelligence level. People admit harsh judgments toward others when they have little information about the situation at hand. Overestimations occur because of failed connections to how other people empathize. People who embarrass themselves tend to focus only on how much they've embarrassed themselves instead of factors around them. Cynical beliefs tend to lead to harsher judgments. All people expect to be judged charitably by friends, family, etc. The overall findings of this research shows that people do in fact overestimate the extent others see them self. It has been shown that the spotlight effect is active in actions and appearance. It is also not just found in embarrassing aspects of life but in aspects that are considered positive as well. (Epley 2002)