Before reading any further, try something small.
Think back to the last time that something was a little bit off when other people were there. Spilling coffee on yourself. Saying the wrong name. Making a joke that fell flat. A sentence in a meeting turned out to be twisted, and you tried to correct it.
Then give it a number. How many people out of all those in the room noticed what happened?
Consider two aspects of that number. First, it came immediately, as if you've already done the count. Second, you can even picture it from the outside as if somebody had recorded it from the rear of the room.
But you did not stand at the back of the room. You were part of it. Who provided that image, then?
So where did that come from? That's what this post is about. This post does not intend to say that no one ever notices anything, because that would be untrue. As we saw in The Voice That Says You'll Fail, the mind is quick to forecast how a moment will end. But deciding who was watching is just as fast. The rest is less than an assurance of bravery, but I believe more practical. The room normally sees much less than you do, and there is a straightforward way of discovering this.
Twice as bright from the inside
It has been studied by three researchers: Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Husted Medvec, and Kenneth Savitsky who developed this feeling into an experiment. These psychologists instructed the college students to wear a T-shirt which had the image of the singer Barry Manilow printed in a large manner, something which the majority of the students of that time wouldn't want to be seen wearing. After that, they made the students enter the room where there were several students completing questionnaires and stay there for a very short while before leaving to wait outside.
Then the question arose. How many of the people in the room could identify the face on the shirt?
Students who were wearing it, on average, guessed 46 percent. When the researchers went to ask the room, 23 percent recognized him.
Let that sink in for a moment. The shirt people thought they had been noticed by twice as many pairs of eyes. This was done by people who had an absolute idea of what they wore, who entered the room knowing they were going to be noticed, and who had all the incentive in the world to notice reactions.
The psychologists conducted this experiment again, using shirts that people were happy to wear and showing faces they admire. This difference increased in magnitude. Finally, in a third study, the participants in small-group discussion thought that their verbal gaffes, clumsy comments, and even their good ideas would stand out to others more than they actually did. The researchers summed it up plainly: "people overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others." And they named it the spotlight effect.
That means the experience is not an indication of anything being wrong with you. This is just the way attention feels from the inside.
The opinion we trust more than our own
More than eighteen centuries ago, the words that were penned by Marcus Aurelius in Greek in his personal journal could have been penned yesterday. He had often wondered, he wrote, how it is that "every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others."
Do read it twice. We love ourselves more than anything else, but yet it is the room that gets the final say.
Yet the opinion that we so rely on is generally an opinion that we have never heard. We do not ask the room. We made it up; we made it up in the one place where the light is brightest, and that place is our own.
Where were you looking?
But here comes another experiment, and it is the other way around.
Try to think back to the last meeting, dinner, or party where you were among some people you didn't know. See if you can remember any small mistake they made. A mispronounced word. Maybe there was a stain on their sleeve. An interruption where they momentarily forgot their train of thought.
Did you notice anything?
It's difficult for most people. Someone certainly did mess up because everyone messes up sooner or later. You just were not paying attention, because you had other things on your mind. You were concerned about your next point, if yours was well-taken, if anyone realized that you were late.
Everyone in there was the same way. Everyone stood in his or her own spotlight, and when one is standing in a spotlit circle, one sees very little of those outside it.
That is, more or less, all that the room remembers about you. That's about how much you remember of them.
Kinder than you expect
Then there is the second fear that lurks behind the first fear. Even if fewer people noticed, wouldn't those few think any less of you?
In a separate experiment carried out by Kenneth Savitsky, Nicholas Epley and Thomas Gilovich, they tried to find out how accurate this perception is. In four experiments, the judgment that was expected after an embarrassing situation was compared with the actual judgment made by the observers. In some cases, participants were asked to imagine making small social errors. Others performed poorly at a cognitive test in front of an audience. In both scenarios, the evaluation expected was more severe than the evaluation actually given. In the researchers' words, "these fears are commonly exaggerated."
This is partly because of what each one gets to see. For the one who stumbles, it is mostly about the stumble. For the observer, it happens against a far broader canvas of life - a complete person, a whole day, a room full of other things happening around.
At times, the gap can become even warmer than that. Erica Boothby, Gus Cooney, Gillian Sandstrom and Margaret Clark did an interesting experiment where they found out, after a conversation with a stranger, how much people felt they were liked by the other person and asked the other person the same question. In the laboratory settings, in the context of freshmen getting to know their roommates, and in a meeting of adults at a workshop, people under-estimated their likeability. The gap endured for many months among the roommates. The researchers put their conclusion in a single line: after people have conversations, "they are liked more than they know."
The room usually sees less than you fear, and the people who do notice tend to be kinder than you expect.
Why the light feels so bright
But if the room saw so little, why does the experience make us feel so differently?
Gilovich et al., however, proposed an explanation that was quite straightforward. When people estimate how they appear to others, they begin with how they experience the situation themselves, and the experience is immediate and vivid. We then make a correction, knowing that other people are paying less attention to us than we are. We do adjust, but not enough; we stop way before where the actual room was looking at us.
This was done in an interesting way. While some of the students came to the room just as they had put on the shirt, others first spent fifteen minutes in isolation with the shirt on, until they had got accustomed to it. The same shirt was worn in the same type of room. Students, who had adapted to the shirt, estimated that fewer people would recognize the face on it.
The room had not changed at all. Only the wearer of the shirt had.
Give it a try right now. Return to the experience described at the beginning of the post. Do it again, but this time, from your own chair in the corner, from one of those persons who just happened to be there. What were they doing just a second before? What was their concern for the day? What did they see, if anything?
What changed?
The moment becomes smaller for many people. It does not disappear. It just reveals its true size: a few seconds in a busy afternoon of another person.
This is the most comforting part of the whole story. The size of the spotlight is less dependent on the audience but rather on how well we know ourselves. A spotlight shines brightest around the lamp, and you are the one standing beside it.
What the spotlight costs, and what this cannot do
Here, the authors describe how this area of research originated. The researchers conducted other experiments before this one and discovered that most of people's biggest regrets in life are actions that were not taken. Many of these actions are connected with the fear of making a fool of oneself in front of others. People do not dance, do not sing, do not participate in the game, do not raise their hand since they envision the audience as being elsewhere.
This is the real cost of the spotlight effect. It takes from us much more in what we don't attempt than in what we endure.
Honesty should also come with some limitations. These are relatively small-scale studies performed on college students of the United States involving the measurement of quite fleeting instances of behavior, a shirt, a discussion, and a conversation. The light of the spotlight effect is less bright than one would feel, but it is not darkness either. In the case of the T-shirt experiment, almost a quarter of the room noticed. Also, people's estimates of how many noticed them were not random, and people who really drew attention tended to make a higher estimate. We are usually correct about the direction, but wrong about the magnitude.
However, light could be cast in the opposite direction too. In addition, the same researchers note that habits which we are not even aware of, such as wearing heavy cologne, might actually be more noticeable to others than we realize. Spotlight effect is a tendency, which has exceptions.
One more limit matters. If the fear of being watched keeps you from work, school, friendships or everyday errands for months, that may be social anxiety disorder. It is common and treatable, and it deserves more than a new way of looking at a moment. Please talk to a doctor or a licensed therapist.
Tomorrow, once
This is just one thing you could try, just once, tomorrow.
Next time you sense the beam shining down upon you, after a stumble, a misstep, a time when you can feel the warmth in your face, there is just one little step to take before the tale begins. Take a look around and count. How many eyes are really looking at you now?
And ask the question you forgot to ask. Mine sounds like this: "Erdem, who actually saw it?"
Marcus Aurelius was curious as to why we give more credence to the opinions that our neighbours have of us rather than our own opinion of ourselves. It may be that we rarely find out what our neighbors really see. Tomorrow, do it just once.
The room is usually more silent than the light.