The Spotlight Effect

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by Nicole Asch8 views·Updated Apr 22, 2021
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  1. Hi, I'm Nikki Ash.
  2. And the topic I chose to focus on is the
  3. spotlight effect.
  4. The spotlight effect is a very common psychological phenomenon that
  5. psychologists defined as a person's tendency to overestimate the extent
  6. to which others notice, judge and remember his or her
  7. appearance and behavior in my own simpler terms, we basically
  8. believe that we are the main character in our own
  9. hit movie and everyone around us is the extras or
  10. the viewers and they're just watching us noticing us looking
  11. at us.
  12. But are they?
  13. This question is what I want to assess today.
  14. You may be wondering why I chose this topic out
  15. of all the topics I could have chose from and
  16. why it's important to me.
  17. I am here to tell you that I chose this
  18. because I suffer from severe anxiety and feel like people
  19. are constantly watching me, especially when I'm working out at
  20. the gym.
  21. Yeah, this can be a really debilitating feeling for me
  22. and it causes a lot of social stress and I
  23. can't imagine how many other kids feel the exact same
  24. way. So because of that, I wanted to talk about
  25. this topic because I realize it's so incredibly common and
  26. the more I know about it and the more other
  27. people know about it hopefully will help people and myself
  28. deal with their anxiety.
  29. Yeah. Before conducting my own research today, I wanted to
  30. see it was already out there on the web.
  31. After doing some research, I did find an experiment that
  32. indeed tested the spotlight effect.
  33. The experiment was back in 2000 and researchers sent a
  34. student to walk into a room full of other college
  35. students wearing a Barry Manilow T Shirt, which for college
  36. would be extremely embarrassing.
  37. This is what the shirt looked like, approximately.
  38. Yeah, definitely embarrassing.
  39. Anyways, the student wearing the shirt was convinced that the
  40. embarrassing shirt would be noticed by at least half of
  41. the students in the class.
  42. But after follow up interviews, the researchers found that in
  43. reality Only about 25 were able to identify the very
  44. mental A.
  45. T shirt.
  46. So what does this tell us?
  47. It proves that we are so focused on ourselves that
  48. we assume others are paying just as close attention to
  49. us, but actually everyone else is just concerned with their
  50. own lives and their own problems.
  51. Now, in the year 2021, I want to retest the
  52. spotlight effect in my own way.
  53. For my research, I decided to make a survey with
  54. questions about how and where people feel they are being
  55. looked at the most to make sure it wasn't bias.
  56. I wanted to do this anonymously.
  57. So I sent it out to college students in my
  58. classes and their names would not be recorded Also because
  59. of COVID and knowing that it would be hard to
  60. get some responses.
  61. I capped it off at 35 responses.
  62. So now I want to share what questions I asked.
  63. The first one was when you're out in public.
  64. Do you feel like other people are watching or looking
  65. at you?
  66. Question two.
  67. Do you find yourself looking around often to check if
  68. you are being looked at?
  69. Question three, do you think you overestimate or underestimate how
  70. much other people notice you?
  71. Question for what location do you feel the most eyes
  72. are directly on you or paying attention to you?
  73. Doesn't make you nervous thinking other people are looking at
  74. you. So that was my last question.
  75. And now I would like to share the results.
  76. What happened.
  77. Let's take a look For our first question.
  78. We had 80 of students say yes and 20 of
  79. students say now.
  80. For a second question, we had 74.3 of students saying
  81. yes And 25.7 of students saying No.
  82. Mhm. For our third question, we had 71.4 of students
  83. overestimating, while 28.6 of students were underestimating for this question,
  84. I included the gym, a restaurant, home and school as
  85. the options.
  86. And here we have 45.7 Jim 31.4 school and 22.9
  87. restaurant. Therefore No one chose home.
  88. Yeah. For this one, we had 68.6 Yes and 31.4
  89. now. Yeah, that was our last question.
  90. So now let's talk about the importance and the impact.
  91. Yeah. Being aware of the spotlight effect can help to
  92. lessen nervousness, anxiety and embarrassment in social situations.
  93. And I feel that if we get to a point
  94. where we realize that nobody is really paying attention to
  95. us or really cares about what we're doing, that hopefully
  96. will stop worrying so much.
  97. Mm. So I want you to remember that not everyone
  98. is staring at you, even if you feel like they
  99. are. It's really all in your head.
  100. Yeah. Thank you so much for watching.
  101. And I hope you learned a lot and maybe this
  102. really helped you.
  103. All right.
  104. Next. On my last slide, I just have my references
  105. in a p.
  106. A.