500 Words a Week - The Spotlight Effect

The spotlight effect refers to our tendency to overestimate how much other people notice or think about us. Many of us have experienced moments when we are afraid to do or say something due to being put in the spotlight in front of others to judge. When in reality, everyone is in their own spotlight, thinking of how they are being perceived or portrayed rather than analyzing others.

The spotlight effect comes from social psychology. All people are very focused on themselves, their actions, their appearance and they believe everyone is just as aware and making comments on these. As mentioned above, nobody is really paying attention to you. Everyone is trapped in their own little spotlight, focusing on their own actions and worrying what others are thinking.

Whenever we begin to think about what other people think about us, we overestimate how likely they are to care about those things. When we participate in group discussions, we overestimate how memorable our perceived negative contributions are to other members in the discussion. We may have said something that upon reflection we thought was silly, or asked a poor question, we immediately think everyone has noticed and will remember what we said. When in fact, hardly anyone will.

We are so focused on our own appearance and actions, it’s difficult for us to remember that other people are not as focused on what we look like or on what we do, since they are already preoccupied with how they look or act.

The harmful aspect of this spotlight effect is that because we overestimate how likely others are to notice the negative things about us, we prevent ourselves from taking the actions or pursuing the path that is in our most interest. As we are unnecessarily worried about what other people will think of us.

I’m guilty of constantly replaying situations in my head and thinking what other people must have thought of me. How I must have come across as clueless, or being critical of myself for phrasing a sentence a certain way. When in fact I’m most likely overestimating how much people care about it, and how little it matters in the long run.

While in some regard it is beneficial for us to be conscientious of how we come across to other people, we mustn’t get obsessed by it. We mustn’t let the fear of what we perceive others will think stop us from doing what we believe is the right thing for us.

Even if people have viewed what we’ve said in a negative way, or they think lesser of us for asking a simple question, so what. By consistently putting ourselves out there, even if we get something wrong, we create better learning opportunities for ourselves than if we sat quietly at the back of the room.