Escaping the spotlight effect
In psychology, the spotlight effect describes our tendency to significantly overestimate how much people are paying attention to what we say and do.
This is a problem because it makes us more anxious than necessary and sometimes prevents us from taking action that would be in our own best interest.
You experience the spotlight effect when you:
Ruminate over the one small dumb thing you said in a meeting, now believing everyone present questions your intelligence and worth
When you think that everyone will forever remember how smart your contributions were to a discussion relative to other people’s thoughts
Debate endlessly about whether to approach that person you find attractive in a social setting for fear of being rejected in front of others
Believe that everyone paid very close attention to your performance (good or bad, and whatever the context) and that they will remember it for a very long time
Restrain yourself from dancing freely because you think everyone is watching and judging your dance moves, in turn making you more tense and awkward. You stop (or never learn to) enjoy dancing, karaoke, charades, etc. etc.
You can thank evolution for your self-consciousness
We worry a lot about what other people think of us. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, you could be booted out of your tribe for alienating yourself or acting too differently from the others. Getting booted from the tribe probably meant death.
These days, we still carry that intense fear of judgment and acute awareness of others opinions despite that the consequences of alienation in our current society are far more abstract and inconsequential.
To help counter this tendency, remember that everyone else is busy thinking about themselves, too. They are not paying nearly as much attention to you as you think.
Tim Urban draws a hilariously captures the absurdity of the thinking behind the spotlight effect in his post, Taming the Mammoth.
He first shows how we imagine things to be in social settings, with everyone is watching our every move:
Source: Wait But Why
In our imagined reality, everyone is competing for a view of the grand show that is our life. We are the lifeblood of the social scene. We are the center of the universe. The spotlight shines brightly upon us.
But in the real world, other people deeply preoccupied with the experience of being themselves. They have their own problems and worries to deal with. They are not paying attention to your nearly as much as you think. They are worrying about what you think of them.
We could do ourselves a favor by remembering this is a far more accurate representation of how much attention others pay us at any given moment:
Source: Wait Buy Why
Dimming down the spotlight
Recognizing the absurdity of our self-conscious thinking can free us to be bolder in social settings. The fact that people aren't paying nearly as much attention to us as we believe can be a wonderful thing.
The less you worry about how others perceive you in social settings, the more you can be present and enjoy whatever you are doing. You will dance more freely, conversate with greater ease, and generally take more social risks.
This also means that our errors, our slip-ups, our poor performances do not hold nearly as much weight in the memories of others as they do in our own. We can get on with our lives quicker when we do mess up.
The next time you feel the world is watching you closely, let these wise words from Tim liberate you:
No one really cares that much about what you’re doing. People are highly self-absorbed.
Everyone is just busy thinking about themselves, too.
