2. SPOTLIGHT EFFECT
The spotlight effect refers to people’s tendency to
assume their mistakes and perceived personal flaws stand out
clearly to others, as if illuminated by a spotlight.
The phenomenon where people tend to overestimate
how much others notice aspects of one’s appearance or
behavior.
In other words, we tend to think that there is a spotlight
on us all the times, highlighting all our mistakes or flaws, for
all the world to see.
3. Causes:
Comes from being overly self-conscious as well as not being
able to put yourself in the shoes of other person to realize
that their perspective is different from yours.
Examples:
Martha went to a party and ended up spilling some of her
drink on her shirt. As she went to the bathroom to clean up
herself she felt like everyone is watching her and she felt
embarrassed. A few weeks later she tells her friend about it
and her friend doesn’t remember it.
4. ANOTHER EXAMPLE
Your fly’s open
Imagine you’ve just found a great pair of pants at the
thrift store. They fit perfectly and look amazing. When you
wear them to your friend’s party the next day, though, it
becomes obvious why someone gave them up: The zipper
creeps down.
You keep darting into corners to adjust it, but eventually
you get drawn into a conversation. Someone you’ve been
hoping to talk to comes up and you start chatting, forgetting
all about the zipper.
5. As the party winds down, you realize with dismay
that your fly is open again. Unable to remember the
last time you checked, you resign yourself to the fact
that everyone you talked to saw you with your pants
open.
But before you let your worries overcome you,
remember an open zipper is something friends will
generally mention. If no one said anything, it’s likely no
one noticed.
6. Refers to the tendency for people to
overestimate the extent to which their internal
thoughts, feelings, and attitudes ‘leak out’ and
are seen by others.
Some people feel that the self is transparent
and is out there for the world to see.
Illusion of Transparency
7. According to Gilovich et al. (1998), some
individuals feel that other people can discern
their internal states by noting signs of leakage in
their external appearance and behavior. Gilovich
et al. also suggest that the illusion of
transparency is a relatively transitory or visceral
state, that is, it reflects brief episodes of
nervousness, disgust, or alarm.
Illusion of Transparency
8. Causes:
-it happens when we are so used to having complete access
to our emotions and thoughts, that we struggle to
remember that other people don’t have similar access to
them.
Example:
Lianne has been doing mistakes at work for the whole day and her
emotions and actions are so evident. She asked her colleague if she
looks like a mess and her colleague answered you look fine to me.
When in fact the truth is Lianne is really having a bad day.
Illusion of Transparency
9. Example:
Lianne has been doing mistakes at work for the
whole day and her emotions and actions are so
evident. She asked her colleague if she looks like
a mess and her colleague answered you look
fine to me. When in fact the truth is Lianne is
really having a bad day.
Illusion of Transparency
10. The phenomenon appears to stem from what is known
as an anchoring effect. When a person attempts to
determine how his or her internal state appears (or, more
accurately, does not appear) in the eyes of others, the
person is likely to have difficulty getting beyond his or her
own, private, phenomenological experience. In effect,
individuals “anchor” their judgments on their own
experience of their internal states, which can be quite
powerful, and adjust insufficiently when they attempt to
determine how things appear to others.
Why do people succumb to the illusion of transparency?
11. It can simply be difficult to realize that the
intensity with which one feels an internal state may
not be matched by an outward expression that is
equally as intense. As a result, people exaggerate the
extent to which their internal states leak out and
overestimate the extent to which others can detect
their private feelings.
12. Why might people be vulnerable to the spotlight effect
and/or the illusion of transparency?
According to Gilovich et al. (1998, 2000) both effects
result from an anchoring and adjustment process. People are
typically quite focused on their own actions and appearance.
They recognize that other people are likely to be less focused
on them than they are themselves, and try to adjust for that
fact, although insufficiently, when anticipating how they are
seen by others.
13. How to Cope Spotlight Effect and illusion of transparency?
You can overcome the spotlight effect by focusing your attention
outward and noticing other people's reactions to you. This will both
help you to stop focusing inward on your anxiety, as well as notice
how little other people are actually paying attention to you.
According to study of Clark and Wells, they suggest that self-focused
attention is a key maintaining factor in anxiety, because it prevents
socially phobic individuals from noticing social feedback that might
contradict their negative self-beliefs.
14. How to Cope Spotlight Effect and illusion of transparency?
Therefore, from a therapeutic viewpoint, improved
knowledge about processes that are used in the construction
of the self as a social object, may lead to a more effective
way of modifying socially phobic individuals’ mistaken
impression of how the self appears to others; for example,
by training them to ‘anchor’ on their own internal and/or
external feelings of anxiety and/or processes of judgment in
a more neutral fashion.
