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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode

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Speaker 1: of the show. This one originally published on August four,

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Speaker 1: and it is about a psychological phenomenon called the spotlight effect.

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Speaker 1: I think this one, this one may have come out

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Speaker 1: of us thinking about being on zoom calls all the

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Speaker 1: time last summer, which at least of the time we're

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Speaker 1: recording this intro is still an ongoing, uh journey. But

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Speaker 1: but yeah, that was definitely on our minds back then,

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Speaker 1: and and this episode came out of it. But I

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Speaker 1: ended up thinking this was a really interesting subject. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it definitely goes beyond the zoom realm. So if you

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Speaker 1: were by the time you listen to this, if you

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Speaker 1: were outside of the zoom realm. If if this seems

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Speaker 1: like an artifact of the past, uh, you know, don't worry.

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Speaker 1: The spotlight effect is very much in play in the

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Speaker 1: world that you're living in. Hello. Everyone, This is Seth,

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Speaker 1: the audio producer for Stuff to Blow Your Mind. And

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Speaker 1: there's just a quick note before we start. Myself, Robert

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Speaker 1: and Joe, we are still recording in isolation because it

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Speaker 1: is the summer of and well, this episode, we had

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Speaker 1: a bit of a problem with Robert's microphone. It was

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Speaker 1: a one time thing. It shouldn't happen again in the future.

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Speaker 1: But for this episode, it's gonna sound a little bit

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Speaker 1: like Joe is kind of talking to a tv VCR

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Speaker 1: combo and like a bunker somewhere. But well, I guess

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Speaker 1: that's technically kind of what we're actually doing. But anyway, anyway,

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Speaker 1: point is this is a one time incident. Uh, it's

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Speaker 1: all still very understandable, very easy to listen to in

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Speaker 1: this episode of Cleaned it Up as best I can,

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Speaker 1: And next time it'll sound just like normal, we promise. Thanks,

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Speaker 1: enjoy the show. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. In today we're gonna be talking about mostly

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Speaker 1: focusing on a classic psychology paper about an effect in

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Speaker 1: uh in a kind of social cognitive bias known as

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Speaker 1: the spotlight effect. But to get into this subject, I

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Speaker 1: wanted to start off by thinking about something that a

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Speaker 1: lot of people have found themselves doing in the past

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Speaker 1: few months of people who maybe this wasn't part of

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Speaker 1: your job very much recently, but now you spend a

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Speaker 1: significant portion of your day in web video meetings, staring

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Speaker 1: at little boxes of your co workers faces on a

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Speaker 1: computer screen, or maybe just staring at your own face

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Speaker 1: a lot. Yes, uh, I mean, in fact, right now

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Speaker 1: is Joe and I are recording this. We are using

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Speaker 1: a Zoom call. We are using a Zoom conference room

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Speaker 1: to communicate with each other, and then we're using some

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Speaker 1: other programs and what not to to actually record it.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, a lot of people are having to You

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Speaker 1: may be using something different. You might be using what

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Speaker 1: there's like Google meet, Microsoft meeting, like Facebook flop. I

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Speaker 1: mean they're like a million of them, right, I mean

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Speaker 1: this is an optagram. Yeah, it's a growth industry figuring

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Speaker 1: out and it makes sense, right. We need to still

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Speaker 1: be able to connect with each other, We still need

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Speaker 1: to have meaningful meetings and all of those less meaningful

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Speaker 1: meetings and in order to keep the gears of business

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Speaker 1: grinding away. Right. Yeah. And one of the strange things

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Speaker 1: I've noticed, and I've read other people noticing the exact

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Speaker 1: same thing, is that you might expect that being able

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Speaker 1: to do a meeting from your home over the internet

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Speaker 1: would be maybe less exhausting than a meeting in person,

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Speaker 1: but somehow I have not found it to be the case.

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Speaker 1: I found that like, video chats can be just intensely draining,

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Speaker 1: like after they're over, you feel like you've been lifting

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Speaker 1: weights or something. Uh. And part of what's going on

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Speaker 1: here I found very much embodied in the spirit of

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Speaker 1: an article that I saw link to. It's it's just

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Speaker 1: a medium post, and I want to be very clear

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Speaker 1: that I'm not passing judgment on the author here, that

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Speaker 1: nothing wrong with with this person, but the title of

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Speaker 1: it just gave me chills. And the title of this

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Speaker 1: medium post was how to fake eye contact during video

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Speaker 1: chats and why it's important. Yes, this this was this

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Speaker 1: is interesting. This is what a medium article by Alexa Curtis,

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Speaker 1: and they made three key suggestions here. The first one

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Speaker 1: is to use a webcam even if no one else

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Speaker 1: is okay. The second is trick yourself into looking at

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Speaker 1: the camera instead of at the screen impossible, and then

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Speaker 1: tape your prompts, your notes, whatever to your monitor as

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Speaker 1: much as possible instead of having to refer to like

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Speaker 1: a notepad or something. Yeah, the suggest sin is like

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Speaker 1: make a little fake face to go around the webcam

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Speaker 1: box so that we're looking into the camera instead of

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Speaker 1: at the screen. But I just don't think it's like

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Speaker 1: if your face is played back on the screen, unless

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Speaker 1: you are able to turn your face off for yourself,

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Speaker 1: you just you're not going to be able to help it,

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Speaker 1: are you. Yeah. I actually, before I read this, I

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Speaker 1: kind of thought because I'd catch myself doing this. Um,

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Speaker 1: And now now I should say that I am lucky

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Speaker 1: and that I do not have to set through just

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Speaker 1: hours and hours of meetings today and zoom. I have

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Speaker 1: friends who are definitely stuck in that boat, and they

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Speaker 1: seem exhausted by it. We use zoom in these recordings,

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Speaker 1: but for the most part, we're not actually engaging in

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Speaker 1: the video part of it. We we have other stuff,

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Speaker 1: We have notes, stuff that we're looking at when we're recording.

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Speaker 1: But I have found this to be the case with

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Speaker 1: my My Dungeons and Dragons group, which used to meet

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Speaker 1: in person, but now it's forced to meet via zoom,

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Speaker 1: and we have this, you know, and it's like a

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Speaker 1: two or three hour zoom called you know, like a

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Speaker 1: three hour zoom called it would be once a week,

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Speaker 1: you know, to do Dungeon and Dragons. And for some reason,

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Speaker 1: I've been noticing that I've just I felt kind of

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Speaker 1: worn out by it towards the end of of the night,

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Speaker 1: um in ways that I wasn't worn out previously meeting

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Speaker 1: in person, Like I just kind of felt zapped by it,

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Speaker 1: like if we were battling something. At the end, I'm

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Speaker 1: just kind of going through the motions. I'm just not

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Speaker 1: feeling it anymore at that point. Yeah, the exact same experience.

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Speaker 1: I've done social stuff via video calls. I've also been

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Speaker 1: doing a D and D campaign, my my first ever

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Speaker 1: by the way, Thank you over over Zoom, and it's

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Speaker 1: been a lot of fun. But yes, it is. It

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Speaker 1: is kind of exhausting to just participate in the in

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Speaker 1: the eyeball Tennis of of the different video faces on

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Speaker 1: the screen. Something about it hooks its claws into your

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Speaker 1: brain and just pulls and stretches and kind of needs

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Speaker 1: your brain like a ball of dough. Now four only,

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Speaker 1: I don't know how your campaign is going, but with ours,

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Speaker 1: were also using a couple other resources, were Reason to

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Speaker 1: Discord Forum and we're using role twenty to pull up

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Speaker 1: maps and such. So maybe maybe we should upgrade our technology.

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Speaker 1: It's worth looking into. But but basically we have some

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Speaker 1: other things to captivate our eyes during this this process.

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Speaker 1: I guess one of the things about a straight up

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Speaker 1: like business zoom meeting is a lot of times you're

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Speaker 1: just stuck in those Brady bunch um cubes, right, You're

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Speaker 1: just you're just stuck with all these little screen pictures

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Speaker 1: of people and uh and some Sometimes you have it

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Speaker 1: set to where one will take dominance over the others,

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Speaker 1: but you may just be looking at a wall of

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Speaker 1: people's faces. And then you're thinking about again this point

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Speaker 1: of should I be making eye contact with everybody? Should

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Speaker 1: I be focusing on trying to be the most presentable,

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Speaker 1: you know, the most professional looking, Like when they look

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Speaker 1: at my little box, it's like watching a TV broadcast

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Speaker 1: and I'm making direct eye contact with them, maybe by

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Speaker 1: because i have a little sticky smiley face that I've

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Speaker 1: put up at the top of my computer, by the camera.

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Speaker 1: There are multiple ways in which this type of interaction

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Speaker 1: is not normal. I mean, of course, it's not normal

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Speaker 1: to be interfacing through technology at all. Of course, it's

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Speaker 1: kind of strange that you're not looking at the person,

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Speaker 1: but you're looking at the screen, so the eye contact

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Speaker 1: is off. I understand that that point in the article.

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Speaker 1: But at the same time, it is not normal to

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Speaker 1: be able to see yourself while you're talking to people.

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Speaker 1: I can imagine if you know you were always talking

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Speaker 1: to people with a mirror in your hand that was

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Speaker 1: reflecting your face. Yeah, people would rightfully think you were insane,

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Speaker 1: think that was how like self obsessed you are. But

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Speaker 1: you go or I don't know, or afraid of Gorgon's

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Speaker 1: that you always had to have a mirror in your hand.

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Speaker 1: And yet that's the reality we find ourselves. And I

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Speaker 1: know this is this is not just like our particular

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Speaker 1: reaction to this. This is something that that I've read

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Speaker 1: about in multiple popular articles and also not just an

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Speaker 1: obscure scientific articles. Like there was an article I came

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Speaker 1: across and I think it was Business Insider that was

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Speaker 1: called like why you can't stop up steering at yourself

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Speaker 1: in zoom calls? Yes, this was by Shia Fetter titled

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Speaker 1: a cyber psychologist explains why you can't stop steering yourself

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Speaker 1: on zoom calls? And everyone else is probably doing the same, um,

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Speaker 1: which I I have caught myself doing this, sometimes during

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Speaker 1: donuts and dragons, sometimes during work calls, where you know

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Speaker 1: you want to check in, you want to see how

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Speaker 1: you were presenting to the rest of the world. But

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Speaker 1: then it's often easy to sort of, you know, to

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Speaker 1: to to. You're looking at these wall of faces, and

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Speaker 1: then you decide to maximize your own, and you're like,

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Speaker 1: all right, let's see, how's the light hitting me, what's

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Speaker 1: my hair doing right now? How presented my smiling weird?

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Speaker 1: My smiling weird? Do I look do I look engage?

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Speaker 1: Or do I look as bored as I feel? You know? Um?

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Speaker 1: And so that's what this article gets into a little

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Speaker 1: of that year. So m the article discusses some key

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Speaker 1: points made by cyber psychologist Andrew Franklin. So the first

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Speaker 1: one is that in general, adolescents tend to suffer from

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Speaker 1: the imagine very audience delusion, the idea that people in

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Speaker 1: the surroundings are really paying attention to every move they make,

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Speaker 1: and this often follows us into adulthood as well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and this I think is pretty close to or perhaps

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Speaker 1: even just another name for the main issue we're going

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Speaker 1: to be focusing on today and otherwise known as the

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Speaker 1: spotlight effect. Yes, now, one thing about this, this point

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Speaker 1: about adolescents. Uh, I mean, this is of course terrifying

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Speaker 1: to think about, given the nature of social media, which

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Speaker 1: is pretty much predicated on this sort of celebrity aspiring

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Speaker 1: notion of a constant audience. And uh and and one

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Speaker 1: tends to drift to extremes and reaction to that, right,

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Speaker 1: this feeling that every word I put on the Internet,

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Speaker 1: or every video, every whatever is vitally important. It will

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Speaker 1: be viewed by potentially everyone in the world. Yes, You're

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Speaker 1: not just constantly on view, you are constantly being reviewed,

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Speaker 1: is the perception. Yeah, I know obviously that's it's gonna

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Speaker 1: vary from person person, or some people are gonna use

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Speaker 1: social media in a way that hasn't far more limited

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Speaker 1: scope only close friends or maybe even family, maybe just

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Speaker 1: one person can see you know. But but but yeah,

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Speaker 1: it does make me wonder and this would have to

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Speaker 1: be a you know, a discussion for another time, like

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Speaker 1: just what what what is happening when this spotlight effect,

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Speaker 1: this imaginary audience delusion is playing uh into our use

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Speaker 1: of social media. Yeah, but also so this psychology professor

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Speaker 1: Andrew Franklin also makes the point that, like, it's not

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Speaker 1: just an illusion that like video chats are actually exhausting. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: to make the point of video chats are more stressful

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Speaker 1: than in person meetings, and a big part of that

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Speaker 1: is just everything is more distracted, more fragmented, and we

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Speaker 1: have muted or severely lessened nonverbal communicative skills. So you

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Speaker 1: think of a lot of this is kind of an

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Speaker 1: overstatement of the obvious. But you can do far less

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Speaker 1: with your body language, not only your overt bodyline, which

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Speaker 1: like talking with your hands and waving down people to

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Speaker 1: the other side of the table, but in terms of

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Speaker 1: just having a bodily awareness of what everyone is doing

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Speaker 1: and how they are sort of reacting to what's going on,

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Speaker 1: and if someone else is about to speak or needs

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Speaker 1: to speak. Yes, And it's actually hard to tell who's

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Speaker 1: looking at who, Like you can assume if there are

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Speaker 1: a bunch of Brady bunch boxes that people are probably

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Speaker 1: looking if they're not looking at themselves, they're probably looking

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Speaker 1: at the person who's currently talking, but maybe not. You

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Speaker 1: can't tell. Yeah, And and it's also weird to think,

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Speaker 1: like I guess maybe some of you out there had

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Speaker 1: more of like a you know, rules of order kind

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Speaker 1: of a upbringing or or you know, you have some

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Speaker 1: more training and think, Okay, this is how this is

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Speaker 1: how a business meeting goes, this is how a work

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Speaker 1: meeting operates. But I feel for my part, a lot

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Speaker 1: of it's just kind of you just learn it to go,

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Speaker 1: just sort of figure out what is the culture of

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Speaker 1: this group and this meeting, and and how am I

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Speaker 1: supposed to fit in? And then to a certain extent,

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Speaker 1: it feels like we've had to relearn all of that

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Speaker 1: or augment our understand ending of that based on the

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Speaker 1: limitations of the technology. Yeah, I think that's totally right,

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Speaker 1: and and I would I would emphasize yet again that

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Speaker 1: not all digital socialization skills are are interchangeable or transferable

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Speaker 1: to one another. So you might have been well acclimatized

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Speaker 1: to the social skills one needs in order to interact

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Speaker 1: through a different type of mediated social media like like

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Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter or something like that, and still not

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Speaker 1: really have any skills for how to interact via a

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Speaker 1: video chat. It's just like a different set of skills,

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Speaker 1: a different set of things to get used to. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a different talking stick entirely now now. Franklin also

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Speaker 1: drives something that given the strain of keeping up with

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Speaker 1: everyone's tiny boxes and concern over how you yourself look

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Speaker 1: in your box, you might easily find yourself just looking

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Speaker 1: at yourself, staring into the digital mirror and fixating on

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Speaker 1: how you appear to friends, co workers, and bosses and

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Speaker 1: and Franklin maintains that this means you're likely overwhelmed by proceedings,

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Speaker 1: which which I totally get. Again, even with the low

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Speaker 1: stakes confines of a Dungeons and Dragons, you know, nothing

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Speaker 1: huge is on the line here, But by the end

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Speaker 1: of the of the session again, I often find myself

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Speaker 1: kind of zapped in ways that I never felt before

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Speaker 1: within person gaming. And even though we're staring into that

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Speaker 1: digital reflection of our own face, Franklin stresses that people

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Speaker 1: are ultimately not fixating on you like you think they are.

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Speaker 1: They are not setting there watching you and you know,

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Speaker 1: dissecting everything about your appearance and in your background and

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Speaker 1: what your face is doing it in any given set. Yeah. No,

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Speaker 1: They're probably much more likely fixating on themselves the same

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Speaker 1: way you are fixating on yourself. Uh. And so this

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Speaker 1: brings us back to the cognitive bias that we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be focusing on in today's episode, also known as the

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Speaker 1: spotlight effect. And this effect is very interesting because, on

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Speaker 1: one hand, I think it's one of the simplest psychological

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Speaker 1: phenomena we've ever talked about on the show. It's actually

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Speaker 1: very simple to or it's very straightforward in a way.

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Speaker 1: But it's one of those things where if you really

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Speaker 1: internalize it, it's implications could be kind of life changing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's one of these things that doesn't I wouldn't say

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Speaker 1: that it really like changes the nature of your reality,

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Speaker 1: but it brings certain aspects of it into maybe sharper focus.

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Speaker 1: You might realize, Oh, well, okay, that explains some of

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Speaker 1: the things I feel when I am in a meeting

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Speaker 1: or you know, just walking around. Um uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: in a public space or or whatever the case may be. Um,

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Speaker 1: I do feel like it does it does It does

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Speaker 1: feel like a revelation of it in its own way. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So the main paper that I wanted to focus on

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Speaker 1: today was published in the year two thousand in the

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Speaker 1: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Thomas Gilovich, Victoria

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Speaker 1: who Staid Medvec and Kenneth Savitsky, and it's called the

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Speaker 1: spotlight effect in social judgment, an ecocentric bias, and estimates

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Speaker 1: of the salience of one zone actions and appearance. You

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Speaker 1: can pretty easily find a full PDF of this online

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Speaker 1: if you want to read it. And this is a

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Speaker 1: highly cited paper. It has been referred to many many

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Speaker 1: times in the years since as a kind of seminal

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Speaker 1: work on this on this social cognitive bias. So the

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Speaker 1: authors begin with some anecdotal observations, and these observations are

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Speaker 1: that for both good and ill, it often seems like

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Speaker 1: stuff you expect other people to notice and recall about

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Speaker 1: you really goes unnoticed. Uh. And also on the good side,

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Speaker 1: that might be like something smart that you said in

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Speaker 1: a discussion group. You're like really pleased with yourself that like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I had that really good insight or I made that

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Speaker 1: really funny joke, and then it turns out later that

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Speaker 1: nobody else seems to recall that you said anything. Or

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Speaker 1: perhaps this often actually happens in athletic contexts, where people

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Speaker 1: will make a really good odd in a basketball game

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Speaker 1: or something, and they will expect people to remember that

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Speaker 1: they did that. But then maybe it turns out that

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Speaker 1: nobody really noticed. It just kind of was one of

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Speaker 1: the goals in a game in which many goals were scored.

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Speaker 1: And as frustrating as this can be, it can also

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Speaker 1: kind of be a relief that it works the other

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Speaker 1: way to People often don't seem to have noticed when

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Speaker 1: you make what feels like a really obvious mistake faux

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Speaker 1: paw on a first meeting, or when you misspeak and

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Speaker 1: what feels like an embarrassing way, or that time you

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Speaker 1: had spinach in your teeth, like you obsess over that

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Speaker 1: and you're afraid it's going to completely ruin your reputation,

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Speaker 1: that everybody's gonna remember you for that thing forever. But

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Speaker 1: a lot of times it seems like maybe nobody even noticed. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the dual nature of this particular revelation, I think ultimately

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Speaker 1: it is positive because, yeah, maybe it means you're not

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Speaker 1: as important as you thought you were. Maybe you're not

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Speaker 1: as a it's a it's explosive the personality as you

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Speaker 1: thought you were. But on the other hand, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe the steaks a little bit lower every time you

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Speaker 1: open your mouth. Yeah, Yeah, that's the hypothesis at the

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Speaker 1: heart of this paper that these anecdotal observations are indicative

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Speaker 1: of a real trend that can be measured that, in general,

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Speaker 1: humans have an ecocentric bias that causes us to believe

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Speaker 1: that our actions and our appearance are much more salient

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Speaker 1: and notable to other people than they really are. Quote.

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Speaker 1: People tend to believe that more people take a note

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Speaker 1: of their actions and appearance than is actually the case.

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Speaker 1: We dubbed this putative phenomenon the spotlight effect. People tend

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Speaker 1: to believe that the social spotlight shines more brightly on

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Speaker 1: them than it really does. Yeah, this is insightful, and

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Speaker 1: I think we can all match this up pretty easily,

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Speaker 1: first of all with our own experiences, but also with

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Speaker 1: some of the ideas that we've discussed on the show before.

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Speaker 1: Uh specifically, First of all, there's the self narrative aspect

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Speaker 1: of our inner thoughts. You know, through the inner workings

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Speaker 1: of consciousness, were constantly weaving together a story about who

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Speaker 1: we are and how we fit into the world. It's

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Speaker 1: a little movie, and we're the main character, so of

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Speaker 1: course we're the most important person in that story. Right.

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Speaker 1: You're trying to link together a series of what are

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Speaker 1: in fact sort of random events into a cohesive narrative

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Speaker 1: with a logic to it, right, And then through theory

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Speaker 1: of mind, we're constantly running simulations about the mental states

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Speaker 1: of other people, specific people, people in general, known people,

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Speaker 1: unknown people, sort of hypothetical people. Uh. And and of

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Speaker 1: course one of the key aspects of any of these

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Speaker 1: simulations is, you know, how do they relate to me,

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Speaker 1: how do they think about me? What are their intentions

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Speaker 1: towards me? And that makes sense, right, There's an inherently

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Speaker 1: self centered quality to this sort of thinking because it

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Speaker 1: all comes down to individual survival. We tend to air

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Speaker 1: on the side of seeing tigers in the grass when

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Speaker 1: there are none, which is better of the two possible

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Speaker 1: gambles here, But it also means going through life perpetually

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Speaker 1: imagining how the tiger sees you. Yeah, and so this

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Speaker 1: is in some ways the exact social equivalent of the

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Speaker 1: agency detection overdrive, where you, you know, over interpret a

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Speaker 1: crack of a twig as a tiger in the grass. Here,

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Speaker 1: you over interpret any little thing that that you think

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Speaker 1: maybe going wrong in a social interaction as something that

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Speaker 1: people will notice and remember and judge you for. So

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Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and then when

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Speaker 1: we come back, we can get a little bit further

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Speaker 1: into this study. Thank you, thank you, thank Alright, we're back. Okay.

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Speaker 1: So we're talking about the study from the year two

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Speaker 1: thousand by Gilovich and co authors who are putting forth

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Speaker 1: this this putative phenomenon that at the time they called

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Speaker 1: the spotlight effects, the idea that we overestimate the salience

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Speaker 1: of our appearance and our behavior to other people. And

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Speaker 1: the authors here note several lines of previous research that

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Speaker 1: helped point to this conclusion. One of them is, first

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Speaker 1: of all, this may not be surprising at all, but

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Speaker 1: people do tend to have egocentric biases that you can

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Speaker 1: measure quite easily and in in tests. These are biases

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Speaker 1: that overstate the importance of the self. Just one example

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Speaker 1: the site is a paper by Ross and Sickly published

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine called ego centric Biases and Availability

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Speaker 1: and Attribution, and it showed it showed this in the

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Speaker 1: realm of what's called responsibility allocation, Who did, how much

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Speaker 1: and how important was what they did? So there are

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Speaker 1: several different ways you can test for this. Uh, maybe

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Speaker 1: in discussion groups, maybe in household chores, maybe in basketball teams. Uh,

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Speaker 1: quote one zone, contributions to a joint product are more

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Speaker 1: readily available. That is, more frequently and easily recalled. Individuals

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Speaker 1: accepted more responsibility for a group product than other participants

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Speaker 1: attributed to them. So the easy way of thinking about

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Speaker 1: this is, oh, our team one, because I scored that goal. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I kind of this particularly telling. The authors point out

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Speaker 1: that the research indicates that when individuals undertake complex social interactions,

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Speaker 1: they alternate between the roles of speaker or actor and

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Speaker 1: listener or observer, but much of their attention is ultimately

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Speaker 1: going to be directed in many cases at planning and

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Speaker 1: executing their own responses. And I think we can relate

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Speaker 1: to this. Uh, you know when when those times when

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Speaker 1: you haven't quite zoned out on a meeting, like you're

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Speaker 1: not just or or a conversation. You're not just you know,

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Speaker 1: out here thinking about Star Wars in the back of

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Speaker 1: your head. No, you're focusing instead on the thing that

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Speaker 1: you're getting ready to say, your interjection into the conversation,

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Speaker 1: the joke that you are intending to make when you

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Speaker 1: get the talking stick. Um. And uh, you know, because

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Speaker 1: ultimately that's often a part of any kind of like

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Speaker 1: three way or or or larger conversation is when when

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Speaker 1: is it going to be my turn? And how am

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Speaker 1: I going to make the most out of my my

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Speaker 1: time speaking. I believe there's actually a name for this

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Speaker 1: exact effect. It's a different thing spend stuff. I mean,

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Speaker 1: obviously it's very related to the stuff we're talking about,

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Speaker 1: but I think it's called the next in line effect,

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Speaker 1: where you can measure that people have less recall of

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Speaker 1: if you if you like, sit people in a circle

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Speaker 1: and go around the circle asking them to speak, people

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Speaker 1: have less recall of the person who spoke right before

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Speaker 1: them than they do everybody else, because you know, when

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Speaker 1: the person right before you was talking, you're planning what

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Speaker 1: you're gonna say. Yeah, And it means that when one

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Speaker 1: thinks back on a meeting, so you're in this meeting,

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Speaker 1: you have this period of time where you're you're applying

431
00:23:30,960 --> 00:23:34,439
Speaker 1: most of your cognitive efforts towards preparing for your own words,

432
00:23:34,800 --> 00:23:36,840
Speaker 1: and then when you think back on it, you're more

433
00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:39,760
Speaker 1: likely to remember the thing that you were focused on

434
00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:42,480
Speaker 1: at the time. You know, your own words, your own

435
00:23:42,520 --> 00:23:46,119
Speaker 1: contribution um, because that's where that's where you're spending the

436
00:23:46,359 --> 00:23:50,400
Speaker 1: mental resources. The exception to this however, would be if

437
00:23:50,440 --> 00:23:54,000
Speaker 1: one's could contribution required a little effort, like instead of

438
00:23:54,359 --> 00:23:57,720
Speaker 1: plotting to interject something that will make everyone laugh or

439
00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:01,239
Speaker 1: pursuing some specific strategic aim in the meeting, what if

440
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:03,560
Speaker 1: it was just the part of the meeting where every

441
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:06,479
Speaker 1: week your boss says, hey, Roy, what are the numbers?

442
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:08,199
Speaker 1: Just read us the numbers real quick, and then you

443
00:24:08,240 --> 00:24:10,320
Speaker 1: read the numbers something that's you know, quick and normal

444
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:13,400
Speaker 1: like that. Now, the exception of this they mentioned would

445
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:16,440
Speaker 1: be passive observers, people who are in the meeting but

446
00:24:17,320 --> 00:24:20,560
Speaker 1: are not planning to have the talking stick at any point,

447
00:24:20,640 --> 00:24:22,639
Speaker 1: don't have any kind of active role in the meeting,

448
00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:25,040
Speaker 1: or if they do, maybe it is just reading off

449
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:27,720
Speaker 1: the stats and they don't have a larger role to play,

450
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:31,119
Speaker 1: so they might well focus more on other people in

451
00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:33,679
Speaker 1: the meeting. They are, they are going to be the

452
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:36,400
Speaker 1: ones that are going to be more likely to notice

453
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,359
Speaker 1: what you say or do that. That totally makes sense

454
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:42,840
Speaker 1: to me, Um, I think I have much better recall

455
00:24:42,920 --> 00:24:45,879
Speaker 1: of meetings where I am not expected to speak. That

456
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:47,879
Speaker 1: being said, and this is this is me, not the

457
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:52,440
Speaker 1: authors here, But I suspect that the passive observers are

458
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:56,800
Speaker 1: also far more likely to be thinking about Star Wars

459
00:24:56,920 --> 00:24:58,879
Speaker 1: or what they're they need to buy at the grocery

460
00:24:58,880 --> 00:25:02,920
Speaker 1: score later that so supernatural biker movies. Yeah, or here's

461
00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:04,840
Speaker 1: a big one and we didn't even get into this,

462
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:09,400
Speaker 1: but via the zoom call, uh one has a tremendous

463
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:12,919
Speaker 1: ability to just simply go to other websites during the

464
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:17,159
Speaker 1: call and still look basically attentive, right, because you'd just

465
00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:20,920
Speaker 1: be looking at the screen either way. Yeah, there's your excuse, folks,

466
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:24,560
Speaker 1: digital hookie, because anybody tried just putting up like a

467
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:27,600
Speaker 1: face like I know, you can insertain backgrounds on these

468
00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:29,959
Speaker 1: video calls, putting up a background that has a photo

469
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:32,440
Speaker 1: of them in it so it looks like they're sitting there.

470
00:25:32,840 --> 00:25:35,480
Speaker 1: I bet somebody has somebody out there has gotten a

471
00:25:35,520 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 1: little bit forward and figured out a way to make

472
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:39,359
Speaker 1: it happen. It would be It would be kind of

473
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:41,960
Speaker 1: the equivalent of but didn't Helmer Simpson have some glasses

474
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:44,440
Speaker 1: at one point that made him look like he was awake? Yes,

475
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 1: it's when he's in he's on a jury and he's

476
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:50,760
Speaker 1: expected to be paying attention, but he is sleeping. That's right,

477
00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:54,880
Speaker 1: that's right, I remember that wide awake glasses and one

478
00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:57,960
Speaker 1: of the other jurors and arcs on him. But yeah,

479
00:25:57,960 --> 00:26:00,919
Speaker 1: so so anyway, the effect here, I think pretty straightforward.

480
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 1: If an action stands out in your own mind for

481
00:26:03,560 --> 00:26:06,119
Speaker 1: whatever reason, you're going to end up thinking it was

482
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 1: more important in some objective sense than it actually was.

483
00:26:10,920 --> 00:26:14,240
Speaker 1: And so, in other words, if people overestimate the relevance

484
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:17,119
Speaker 1: of their own actions in an objective sense, wouldn't they

485
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:24,080
Speaker 1: also overestimate how relevant their actions are subjectively to other people? Yeah? Yeah.

486
00:26:24,359 --> 00:26:27,840
Speaker 1: The authors also point out in many cases it might

487
00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:31,199
Speaker 1: not matter it maybe quote overlook when joint endeavors do

488
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:35,639
Speaker 1: not require explicit allocations of responsibility. But obviously sometimes this

489
00:26:35,760 --> 00:26:38,840
Speaker 1: is not the case. Yeah. It particularly makes me think

490
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:43,120
Speaker 1: of a frequent folk you see in films, the villainous meetings,

491
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:47,119
Speaker 1: when you have villains around a table generally having a meeting,

492
00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:51,320
Speaker 1: having this sort of you know, dark, more antagonistic version

493
00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:57,600
Speaker 1: of our regular real life business meetings. Um, the meetings

494
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:00,360
Speaker 1: of Specter in the early James Bond Yeah, who are

495
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: Blowfeld would have the have the command consoled like electrocute

496
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:07,240
Speaker 1: somebody's chair, yeah, or another favorite of mine, or the

497
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:10,919
Speaker 1: meetings you see the Imperial meetings in like Star Wars

498
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 1: and New Hope, or we're also in Rogue one where

499
00:27:13,359 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 1: we have the likes of Darth Vader and grand Moth

500
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:19,960
Speaker 1: Tarken or or Orson Critic. You know, they're they're they're

501
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:23,199
Speaker 1: all objectively, they're they're all talking about, okay, we need

502
00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:24,920
Speaker 1: to get the Death Star up and running. But these

503
00:27:24,920 --> 00:27:28,359
Speaker 1: are all highly egotistical and self focused individuals, and they

504
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:31,680
Speaker 1: all seen each pretty focused on their own key role

505
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 1: in everything, and they're certainly not about like elevating the

506
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 1: project itself above personal ambition. Yeah. Yeah, they're clearly like

507
00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:41,560
Speaker 1: trying to stick up for their own branch. It's like,

508
00:27:41,600 --> 00:27:44,560
Speaker 1: you know, dangerous to your star fleet commander, not to

509
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:48,720
Speaker 1: my battle station. Yeah, okay. A few more previously observed.

510
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:51,800
Speaker 1: A psychological phenomenon that the authors call attention to is

511
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:54,439
Speaker 1: is potentially backing up the idea of a spotlight effect.

512
00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:58,199
Speaker 1: Another one is what's known as naive realism. The right

513
00:27:58,320 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: quote naive realism or for is to the common tendency

514
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:04,320
Speaker 1: to assume that one's perception of an object or event

515
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 1: is an accurate reflection of its objective properties, not a

516
00:28:08,600 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 1: subjective interpretation or construle. In other words, Look, it happened

517
00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:16,240
Speaker 1: just like I saw it. It's the tendency to believe

518
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:19,960
Speaker 1: that your perception is unbiased and accurate, even though you

519
00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:23,760
Speaker 1: might readily attribute, you know, mistakes and biases to other

520
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:27,239
Speaker 1: people's perceptions. Yeah, and this is all tied up in

521
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:31,320
Speaker 1: the philosophy of perception. Um. So when we're talking about

522
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 1: naive realism also known as direct realism, that stands in

523
00:28:35,800 --> 00:28:40,800
Speaker 1: opposition do indirect or representational realism. So direct or niaive

524
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:44,000
Speaker 1: realism holds that we perceive things in the world directly

525
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:48,960
Speaker 1: and without the then the mediation of any impression, idea,

526
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 1: or representation. And I think we can generally agree, especially

527
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:55,080
Speaker 1: on this show, that this is not the true nature

528
00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: of how a human process is reality. No, the things

529
00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:00,680
Speaker 1: you see are based on the external world, but it's

530
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: not an unbiased direct representation of the external world. Right, Like,

531
00:29:05,120 --> 00:29:07,480
Speaker 1: there's there's a weight to things, you know. It's like

532
00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:11,400
Speaker 1: if you know, if yesterday somebody slapped me with the fish,

533
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:15,040
Speaker 1: today I see a fish and like that that the

534
00:29:15,360 --> 00:29:17,719
Speaker 1: nature of my perception is going to be augmented by

535
00:29:17,760 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 1: that previous experience. Right now. Indirect realism adheres to the

536
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:26,800
Speaker 1: idea that material objects do have mind independent existence, but

537
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 1: but not that our visual perception is unmediated, or that

538
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:33,480
Speaker 1: these objects necessarily possess all of the features that we

539
00:29:33,600 --> 00:29:36,720
Speaker 1: perceived them to have. Like a quick example of that

540
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: would be, obviously, we look at our beloved pets, and

541
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:41,959
Speaker 1: we may, you know, we may perceive them to have

542
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:46,480
Speaker 1: various nuances that they simply do not have. And you know,

543
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:49,520
Speaker 1: as pet owners, were generally okay with that. Yeah, I

544
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: think that's exactly right. And I think indirect realism, I

545
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:54,160
Speaker 1: don't know, to me, that is the model of the

546
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 1: world that makes the most sense. Like I would not

547
00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:59,120
Speaker 1: say I'm an idealist. I believe the external world doesn't exist.

548
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 1: I don't go for at But obviously our our ideas

549
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:05,680
Speaker 1: about what is motivating our dog or something might be

550
00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 1: more us than actually coming from the dog. Yeah. Now,

551
00:30:10,080 --> 00:30:13,600
Speaker 1: of course, there's also phenomenalism, which generally rejects the mind

552
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:17,720
Speaker 1: independent existence of material logics but accepts on mediated visual

553
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:22,400
Speaker 1: perception and the possession of of perceived features. So other

554
00:30:22,520 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 1: things are not things as much as they are bundles

555
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:28,640
Speaker 1: of sense data, which is a weird way to to

556
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:33,120
Speaker 1: behold your pat after Yeah, that's getting almost into kind

557
00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:35,880
Speaker 1: of George Berkeley and kind of territory that that I

558
00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 1: don't think I can fully go for, but that it

559
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: ultimately doesn't really play into what we're talking about here. Again,

560
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:45,080
Speaker 1: we're talking about direct realism or our naive realism versus

561
00:30:45,080 --> 00:30:49,320
Speaker 1: indirect or representational realism, right, And I think we do

562
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:53,360
Speaker 1: have a tendency to really underappreciate how much our perceptions

563
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 1: are affected by the kinds of mistakes and distortions that

564
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 1: we readily attribute to other people. And so the authors

565
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:02,120
Speaker 1: of the two thousand paper right that quote applied to

566
00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:05,120
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect. This implies that it might be easy

567
00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: to confuse how salient something is to oneself with how

568
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:12,880
Speaker 1: salient it is to others, precisely because our own behavior

569
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:15,560
Speaker 1: stands out in our own minds, it can be hard

570
00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:18,560
Speaker 1: to discern how well or even whether it is picked

571
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: up by others. Absolutely, we may be attending the same

572
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 1: meeting or Zoom conference call, but we are not all

573
00:31:25,320 --> 00:31:27,680
Speaker 1: attending the same meeting or Zoom conference call, you know

574
00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: what I mean. We we all have different perceptions of

575
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:33,880
Speaker 1: it based on our own biases, our own histories, our

576
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 1: own pervasive thoughts are right, you know. Cognitive model of

577
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 1: the task at hand and our role in it. I mean,

578
00:31:39,320 --> 00:31:41,680
Speaker 1: our our subjective understanding of the meeting is going to

579
00:31:41,760 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 1: different person to person exactly. So leading into the next

580
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:48,280
Speaker 1: thing here that the authors point out as possibly pointing

581
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:50,840
Speaker 1: to a spotlight effect. This is something that has been

582
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:55,160
Speaker 1: documented known as the self as target bias. Quick example,

583
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:57,800
Speaker 1: so you're in a classroom the teacher gives a pop

584
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:01,960
Speaker 1: quiz about last night's reading. Johnny interprets this quiz as

585
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:05,760
Speaker 1: an attack on him personally because he believes that the

586
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:09,720
Speaker 1: teacher must believe that he didn't do the reading. And

587
00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: you know, I think even the best of us sometimes

588
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:15,080
Speaker 1: we fall prey to thinking like this something that is

589
00:32:15,120 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: a a general sort of action applied to everyone. We think,

590
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 1: why are they doing this to me? Yeah? Yeah, especially

591
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: if you have a light up, like a build up,

592
00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:28,760
Speaker 1: build up of anticipation about a given you know, meeting

593
00:32:28,960 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 1: or or social scenario. Yeah, And so the author's right

594
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:35,840
Speaker 1: quote like naive realism, then the self is target bias

595
00:32:35,880 --> 00:32:39,760
Speaker 1: reflects a confusion between what is available to oneself and

596
00:32:39,800 --> 00:32:42,479
Speaker 1: what is likely to be available to and hence guide

597
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:45,800
Speaker 1: the actions of others. So again, Johnny might think, well,

598
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 1: the teacher knows I didn't do the reading, and that's

599
00:32:48,680 --> 00:32:51,200
Speaker 1: why she's giving the test today, or she's giving the

600
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:54,320
Speaker 1: pop quiz today. But the teacher doesn't know that. It's

601
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:57,600
Speaker 1: just you know, that's what he knows. And then finally,

602
00:32:57,600 --> 00:33:00,760
Speaker 1: the authors point out that these previously document at ecocentric

603
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:03,720
Speaker 1: biases are very similar to the kind of egocentrism that

604
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: Jean Piege observed pervading the cognition of young children early

605
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:11,760
Speaker 1: in their development. One of the more important parts of

606
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 1: growing up, in fact, is shedding some of that ecocentrism.

607
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 1: But it turns out we don't shed it all. It

608
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:21,720
Speaker 1: still appears in adults, simply in diminished form. It's certainly

609
00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:26,360
Speaker 1: more diminished in some people than it is in us. Yeah,

610
00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 1: but yeah, so it's young children. I mean, people with

611
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:32,240
Speaker 1: with kids will probably recognize this. Often seem not to

612
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:36,200
Speaker 1: grasp that other people have a different perspective than they do.

613
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:38,600
Speaker 1: This happens when you're very young, and gradually, as you

614
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:43,000
Speaker 1: get older, you get more, you get more consistent about

615
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 1: being able to accurately sort of model the minds of others.

616
00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 1: Understand that they have different desires, different perspectives than you do.

617
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:53,640
Speaker 1: And adults of course by the time of adulthood usually

618
00:33:53,640 --> 00:33:56,960
Speaker 1: recognize this gap rationally, but still might have a hard

619
00:33:57,000 --> 00:34:01,040
Speaker 1: time sort of calibrating to predict it accurate. Really, now,

620
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:03,560
Speaker 1: the authors of this paper here say that what is

621
00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:07,240
Speaker 1: the method that that we use to calibrate this this prediction.

622
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:11,879
Speaker 1: They say that it's probably based on anchoring and adjustment. Now,

623
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:14,720
Speaker 1: I was reading some follow up work by Gilovich about

624
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 1: the the anchoring and adjustment controversy. Very brief refresher on anchoring.

625
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:22,359
Speaker 1: We've done an episode about this in the past. So,

626
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: like when you're trying to come up with an answer

627
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:27,520
Speaker 1: to a question like how much is this car worth?

628
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:30,840
Speaker 1: Or what do people think of the speech I just made?

629
00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:35,280
Speaker 1: You don't necessarily reason toward an answer from a neutral

630
00:34:35,400 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 1: starting point. We often tend to be influenced by sort

631
00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:43,160
Speaker 1: of like data points or hypothetical answers that we can

632
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:45,759
Speaker 1: kind of hang a hat on to begin with. Which

633
00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 1: might be one reason that you've got a good, you know,

634
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:50,439
Speaker 1: price written on the on the windshield of a car,

635
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 1: even if that's not the price you would actually end

636
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 1: up paying. Now, this was the Now, the anchoring and

637
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:58,279
Speaker 1: adjustment model was what the authors were working with at

638
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 1: the time. That's the idea we often think by starting

639
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:03,920
Speaker 1: with an anchor, and then we just adjust our estimate

640
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:06,880
Speaker 1: up or down from the anchor. I was reading some

641
00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 1: follow up work by Gilovich about the adjustment controversy, like,

642
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: is this really the way we think? Is this really

643
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: how we get to our anchor biased answers? Is it

644
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:20,160
Speaker 1: based on this adjustment process? Apparently that idea has come

645
00:35:20,239 --> 00:35:22,960
Speaker 1: under some criticism in the past few decades, and there

646
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 1: are arguments about how to best understand what's happening in

647
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:28,680
Speaker 1: people's heads when they fall for the anchoring bias. We're

648
00:35:28,719 --> 00:35:30,759
Speaker 1: not going to get into the weeds of that argument here.

649
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:32,920
Speaker 1: You can check out our full episode on the anchoring

650
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:35,880
Speaker 1: bias for more depth. Um, but whatever the role of

651
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: an adjustment mechanism in the brain, the anchoring effect does

652
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:43,200
Speaker 1: actually appear in many scenarios, and the authors in this

653
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:47,839
Speaker 1: paper are saying that the anchoring effect manifests in how

654
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:51,640
Speaker 1: we imagine the opinions of other people about us, because

655
00:35:51,680 --> 00:35:54,880
Speaker 1: our our anchor, Our starting point is how we feel

656
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:58,279
Speaker 1: about ourselves, the stuff we notice about ourselves, and then

657
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:01,600
Speaker 1: we kind of reason from there to what other people's

658
00:36:01,600 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: opinions would be. Well that makes sense again coming back

659
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 1: to the idea that we're using theory of mind to

660
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 1: ultimately create simulations about the mind states of everyone in

661
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:14,879
Speaker 1: our lives from you know, from the person we're closest with,

662
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:18,000
Speaker 1: two people that are just you know, like supervisors or

663
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: complete strangers and uh and and all of that is

664
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,480
Speaker 1: constructed with ourselves at the middle, like our model of

665
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:29,080
Speaker 1: ourselfs um is ultimately the like the I guess you

666
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:31,600
Speaker 1: would say that the support structure on which this entire

667
00:36:31,680 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 1: network is built, right, It's kind of like you can't

668
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: build any bridges two ideas of other minds without starting

669
00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 1: from the foundation of your own. And that foundation of

670
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:43,719
Speaker 1: your own is going to come with a lot of

671
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 1: baggage of like knowledge about yourself that other people don't have,

672
00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:52,600
Speaker 1: and high levels of concern about your personal attributes that

673
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:56,160
Speaker 1: other people might not share, probably don't share. And that's

674
00:36:56,200 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 1: everybody we should need to drive that home. Like we're

675
00:36:58,080 --> 00:37:01,320
Speaker 1: not just talking about like say, like it's like stereotypically

676
00:37:01,600 --> 00:37:04,840
Speaker 1: egocentric person you know, or someone who has like like

677
00:37:05,040 --> 00:37:09,120
Speaker 1: very obvious uh and pronounced personality flaws or anything like that,

678
00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:12,760
Speaker 1: or dealing with with various mental health concerns or anything

679
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 1: of that nature. But ultimately this naive perception is also

680
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:19,960
Speaker 1: self perception as well. Yeah, yeah, so I guess here

681
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:22,560
Speaker 1: we get to the actual empirical part of this research,

682
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:24,680
Speaker 1: like how would you study this? How would you look

683
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:28,600
Speaker 1: for empirical evidence of a spotlight effect? And there are

684
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 1: a number of studies that are covered in this paper.

685
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 1: I'm going to discuss them in sequence and very broad strokes.

686
00:37:33,719 --> 00:37:36,000
Speaker 1: Uh so, what, let me guess you know, what's going

687
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 1: to be our our our key um implement in this study.

688
00:37:39,719 --> 00:37:41,719
Speaker 1: Is it going to be like a god helmet that

689
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:44,479
Speaker 1: it scans my brain? Is it going to be uh,

690
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:46,440
Speaker 1: you know, some other kind of like high tech device

691
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:48,799
Speaker 1: that I'm I'm cooking my nervous system up to. You're

692
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 1: extremely close. No, we get into the cybernetics of a

693
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:56,879
Speaker 1: very Manilow T shirt. So the question is something maybe

694
00:37:56,880 --> 00:37:59,320
Speaker 1: a lot of you have wondered before. Do people usually

695
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:02,400
Speaker 1: notice it's on your T shirt? Or do they just

696
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 1: not even care? It's a great question. I know when

697
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:08,360
Speaker 1: I wear a T shirt, I'm I I have certainly

698
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:11,839
Speaker 1: caught myself, especially at least in retrospect, thinking way too

699
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:14,879
Speaker 1: much about how others will perceive this shirt design, yeah,

700
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:17,160
Speaker 1: and what it's saying about me and my interest what

701
00:38:17,239 --> 00:38:20,320
Speaker 1: is it broadcasting to the world, and that would be

702
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:22,040
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I feel like I'm always

703
00:38:22,160 --> 00:38:25,120
Speaker 1: very interested in what other people's shirts say, to the

704
00:38:25,160 --> 00:38:28,480
Speaker 1: point that I sometimes feel self conscious about trying to

705
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:30,279
Speaker 1: understand what someone shure it is because I'm like, I

706
00:38:30,280 --> 00:38:33,280
Speaker 1: don't want to be looking like caught staring at somebody's

707
00:38:33,320 --> 00:38:37,200
Speaker 1: T shirt. I think you probably notice certain kinds of

708
00:38:37,280 --> 00:38:39,520
Speaker 1: shirts more than others, Like you might pick up on

709
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:42,120
Speaker 1: cues that like, oh, this is a band T shirt,

710
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 1: and I'm usually kind of interested in band t shirts,

711
00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:46,760
Speaker 1: so when you see what this is, But like other things,

712
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:50,240
Speaker 1: if it's a i'd imagine like a football team or something,

713
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:52,839
Speaker 1: you might not even take notice. That's true. I guess

714
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:55,560
Speaker 1: the shirts I'm usually interested in are I guess you

715
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 1: know it's a certain extent band shirts, But if it

716
00:38:57,239 --> 00:38:59,160
Speaker 1: has any kind of like monster type thing on it,

717
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:02,080
Speaker 1: then I definitely want to know what's going on. That's right,

718
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 1: that's our brains. That's just our brains being our brains.

719
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:08,360
Speaker 1: Uh so so extremely simple set up for the study

720
00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:10,919
Speaker 1: dead simple. You get a group of participants to gather

721
00:39:10,960 --> 00:39:12,879
Speaker 1: in a room and you have them basically in there

722
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:16,520
Speaker 1: like filling out questionnaires for an experiment that is supposedly

723
00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:21,279
Speaker 1: about memory. And then another participant joins that group late,

724
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: but before they go into the room, you require them

725
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:28,000
Speaker 1: to put on a Berry man Low T shirt. Then,

726
00:39:28,080 --> 00:39:30,279
Speaker 1: after they've been in the room for a very brief time,

727
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:33,160
Speaker 1: you say, actually, this group has already gotten started, so

728
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:35,759
Speaker 1: we're gonna hold you back for for another session. And

729
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 1: then you have the Barry Manilow interloper leave the room,

730
00:39:39,239 --> 00:39:42,560
Speaker 1: and then you ask everybody. Okay, you ask the interloper,

731
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:45,279
Speaker 1: the Berry man Low T shirt wearer, how many people

732
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 1: in the room do you think noticed that you were

733
00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:50,680
Speaker 1: wearing a Berry man Low T shirt? And then you

734
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:53,600
Speaker 1: ask the people who were in the room if they

735
00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:56,000
Speaker 1: noticed who was on the T shirt? Right, You're just

736
00:39:56,400 --> 00:39:59,839
Speaker 1: very simple comparing the person's expectation of how many people

737
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:03,840
Speaker 1: noticed to how many people actually noticed. And true to prediction,

738
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:07,000
Speaker 1: the students who wore the T shirt tended to wildly

739
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: overestimate how many people in the room would notice and

740
00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:13,880
Speaker 1: be able to identify their Manilow T shirt. Generally, the

741
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:18,080
Speaker 1: Manilow interloper guests that about half of the other students

742
00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 1: on average would be able to identify their T shirt,

743
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:24,400
Speaker 1: and in reality only about twenty five percent of the

744
00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:27,680
Speaker 1: observers could do it. So in their minds, the people

745
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:33,080
Speaker 1: wearing this potentially conspicuous piece of clothing mentally doubled the

746
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 1: percentage of people who they thought would notice it. Real quick, Joe,

747
00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:38,880
Speaker 1: when you have the study you were looking at here,

748
00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:41,640
Speaker 1: did you get to see this Manlo T shirt? No?

749
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: I didn't. That's my big question because I'm currently looking

750
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:50,080
Speaker 1: at various very Manilow T shirts in um manage search here,

751
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 1: and they do. They do run the gamut here. We

752
00:40:53,680 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 1: have some we have some very forgettable Manilow shirts, but

753
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:03,799
Speaker 1: we have some some real singers here. Uh yeah, well

754
00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:06,359
Speaker 1: I think so. I could be wrong, but I think

755
00:41:06,400 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 1: what it was was it was just like a picture

756
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:11,880
Speaker 1: of his face. Okay, well even then, like it's a

757
00:41:11,960 --> 00:41:14,400
Speaker 1: it's a noticeable face. I mean you know that. That

758
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 1: was That's part of the whole business proposal here. But

759
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: there were also control groups for this study. They in

760
00:41:22,160 --> 00:41:26,280
Speaker 1: the control groups, this was an interesting calibration. The control

761
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 1: groups were not in the room, but instead they watched

762
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:33,960
Speaker 1: the entire scene play out on a video recording, and

763
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:37,440
Speaker 1: then they were asked to estimate the number of observers

764
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:40,640
Speaker 1: who would notice the T shirt, and the control groups

765
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:44,120
Speaker 1: guessed much closer to the real number of people who

766
00:41:44,120 --> 00:41:47,440
Speaker 1: would actually notice it, and they did not overestimate to

767
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:50,520
Speaker 1: the extent that the person wearing the shirt did. And

768
00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:53,880
Speaker 1: this was taken as evidence that quote the targets inflated

769
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 1: estimates are not simply the result of misguided general theories

770
00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:02,120
Speaker 1: about observers powers of servation. In other words, the relevant

771
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:05,880
Speaker 1: variable is I am the person wearing it. But that

772
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:08,600
Speaker 1: makes sense. Again, we are the we are the central

773
00:42:08,680 --> 00:42:12,320
Speaker 1: character in our own narrative. Okay, second study in this paper,

774
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: so uh, It's worth noting that the majority of the

775
00:42:15,719 --> 00:42:18,759
Speaker 1: students that they interviewed in the first study reported, in

776
00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:23,000
Speaker 1: fact that wearing a very Manilow T shirt was considered embarrassing,

777
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:26,400
Speaker 1: that Barry Manilow was considered kind of corny and uncool.

778
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:28,879
Speaker 1: And it does make me wonder has Barry Manilow come

779
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:31,600
Speaker 1: full circle yet? Has he become cool again? I don't know,

780
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:33,200
Speaker 1: some of those shirts I was just looking at look

781
00:42:33,239 --> 00:42:35,560
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah. I think that was part of the

782
00:42:35,600 --> 00:42:37,400
Speaker 1: design of the first study, was that this is a

783
00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:39,960
Speaker 1: figure that not everybody but a lot of people wearing

784
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:42,759
Speaker 1: the shirt. Would you know, it's not just like any face,

785
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:45,239
Speaker 1: it's somebody who a lot of students would probably feel

786
00:42:45,280 --> 00:42:48,279
Speaker 1: kind of embarrassed to be wearing a shirt of. But

787
00:42:48,480 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: the question is, like, does this phenomena hold for T

788
00:42:52,239 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 1: shirts that would not be embarrassing? That would just be

789
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:57,480
Speaker 1: a picture of anybody, maybe anybody that the student liked.

790
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:00,480
Speaker 1: So the second study tested for the spotlight effect with

791
00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 1: reference to non embarrassing personal details. It replicated the design

792
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:08,040
Speaker 1: of the first study, but it allowed students to choose

793
00:43:08,080 --> 00:43:10,920
Speaker 1: a T shirt featuring a person that they liked and

794
00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:13,719
Speaker 1: viewed as not embarrassing. So it might be a T

795
00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:16,840
Speaker 1: shirt of like Bob Marley or Jerry Seinfeld or something.

796
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 1: Way it was Jerry Seinfeld. Really was that this was

797
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:23,240
Speaker 1: he specifically mentioned? And yeah, yeah that was one of them.

798
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:26,520
Speaker 1: How is that Jerry Seinfeld shirt not embarrassed? I don't know.

799
00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:30,560
Speaker 1: Some people didn't think it was, you know, times changed,

800
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:34,880
Speaker 1: this was what you're thousands something like that. Yeah, the

801
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:37,480
Speaker 1: Bob Marley shirt I think remains that remains cool. But

802
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:39,919
Speaker 1: I just have questions about the Gary Science Felt shirt.

803
00:43:39,960 --> 00:43:43,040
Speaker 1: Maybe this is again just tells more, says some more

804
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 1: about my interests versus other people's interests. But maybe I

805
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:50,200
Speaker 1: am uncool for not wearing one. No, no, no, you're

806
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 1: very cool, Rubbert. But again there was a huge mismatch

807
00:43:54,520 --> 00:43:56,839
Speaker 1: right between. Even when you're wearing a shirt that's not

808
00:43:56,960 --> 00:44:01,280
Speaker 1: conspicuously embarrassing to a number of students, people just predicted

809
00:44:01,320 --> 00:44:03,960
Speaker 1: that observers would notice who was on their shirt a

810
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:07,040
Speaker 1: lot more than the observers actually did. It just makes

811
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:09,919
Speaker 1: me think of of myself or anyone you know. You've

812
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 1: got that new shirt and you're like, is today today?

813
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 1: Is today the day that I wear this, uh, this

814
00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:19,360
Speaker 1: new shirt going unleashed, this bad boy on an unsuspecting world.

815
00:44:19,560 --> 00:44:23,759
Speaker 1: Is the world ready? And yes? The thing is, yeah,

816
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:26,759
Speaker 1: they're ready, and yeah they'll they'll be fine. Also like,

817
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:31,200
Speaker 1: don't really to worry about um Yeah, so so okay,

818
00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 1: But that's appearance. That's just clothing items. What about for behavior?

819
00:44:34,719 --> 00:44:37,440
Speaker 1: Can we look for examples of this in behavior? So

820
00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:41,200
Speaker 1: the third study tested for whether the spotlight effect exists

821
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:45,240
Speaker 1: not just for clothing, but for specifically stuff people say

822
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 1: in a group setting. Quote. In particular, we sought to

823
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:51,239
Speaker 1: investigate whether people tend to believe that their positive and

824
00:44:51,280 --> 00:44:55,440
Speaker 1: negative actions stand out to others more than they actually do.

825
00:44:56,400 --> 00:45:00,120
Speaker 1: And this was tested with stage discussion groups, So they

826
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:02,359
Speaker 1: would have a discussion group meeting, and then they would

827
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:06,760
Speaker 1: ask people afterwards to rate other participants on both positive

828
00:45:06,760 --> 00:45:09,680
Speaker 1: and negative dimensions of their contributions. So you'd rate all

829
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:12,400
Speaker 1: the people you just had a group with, and you'd

830
00:45:12,400 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 1: say how much did participant X due to advance the discussion.

831
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:19,560
Speaker 1: That'd be a positive mark, and then negative things would

832
00:45:19,600 --> 00:45:23,040
Speaker 1: be like how many speech errors did participant X make

833
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:27,440
Speaker 1: or how likely was participant X to offend someone? And

834
00:45:27,600 --> 00:45:30,399
Speaker 1: participants also rated, of course, what they thought others would

835
00:45:30,440 --> 00:45:32,319
Speaker 1: think of them, you know, then they turned it on

836
00:45:32,360 --> 00:45:35,440
Speaker 1: themselves and they found the same thing. The study indicated

837
00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 1: that we tend to overestimate the salience of our behavior

838
00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:43,359
Speaker 1: to others in both positive and negative ways. So it's

839
00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:46,560
Speaker 1: not just like a self serving bias or self critical bias.

840
00:45:46,600 --> 00:45:50,160
Speaker 1: It's just we tend to assume people are paying way

841
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:54,680
Speaker 1: more attention and noticing way more about the stuff we do,

842
00:45:54,800 --> 00:45:57,640
Speaker 1: both good and bad, which makes me think of like

843
00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:00,440
Speaker 1: the hell razor tagline, it's like angels to some devils.

844
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:02,560
Speaker 1: To others. But really, maybe you think am I an

845
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 1: angel or a devil? And in fact you're just kind

846
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:07,480
Speaker 1: of a gray blur that someone does not recall in

847
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:13,720
Speaker 1: any way. An Now, an important thing that's worth pointing

848
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:19,000
Speaker 1: out here is that people's self ratings on this discussion

849
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:22,840
Speaker 1: group thing, we're not entirely divorced from reality. To the contrary,

850
00:46:22,840 --> 00:46:25,800
Speaker 1: the study found that these ratings were in some ways

851
00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:30,200
Speaker 1: based in reality. People who rated themselves as doing more

852
00:46:30,280 --> 00:46:33,799
Speaker 1: to advance the discussion we're also on average rated by

853
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:37,200
Speaker 1: others as doing more to advance the discussion. And people

854
00:46:37,239 --> 00:46:40,400
Speaker 1: who rated themselves as more likely to have said something

855
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: that offended someone were in fact more likely to have

856
00:46:43,560 --> 00:46:47,120
Speaker 1: said something that offended someone. But it's the size of

857
00:46:47,160 --> 00:46:50,719
Speaker 1: these effects, both positive and negative, that was exaggerated when

858
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:54,880
Speaker 1: people were thinking about themselves so in self evaluation and

859
00:46:55,040 --> 00:46:59,320
Speaker 1: insightful comment that might have actually been an insightful comment

860
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:01,800
Speaker 1: to you it feels like, wow, that was earth shaking,

861
00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:05,120
Speaker 1: I really changed the game, or a faux paw that

862
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:08,400
Speaker 1: other people might notice, but you know, doesn't really stand

863
00:47:08,400 --> 00:47:11,040
Speaker 1: out to them all that much. It might become reputation

864
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:16,040
Speaker 1: ruining this terror, this obsession. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, and

865
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:19,520
Speaker 1: again I wonder I can't help think about social media

866
00:47:19,600 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 1: when you have systems that are set up so that

867
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:26,800
Speaker 1: comments that are insightful may see more earth shaking because

868
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:30,120
Speaker 1: they are being you know, re shared or retweeted or

869
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:33,800
Speaker 1: or lighthearted, etcetera. And then and then likewise, there is

870
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:36,440
Speaker 1: the negative reaction to the things as well. And of

871
00:47:36,480 --> 00:47:39,600
Speaker 1: course those tend to be the extremes that we we

872
00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:42,840
Speaker 1: we hear about in a in a digital setting. Yeah,

873
00:47:42,920 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 1: but even then, I think the reality is that, like

874
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:47,480
Speaker 1: most people are not paying attention to you and won't

875
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:52,120
Speaker 1: remember anything you did, right, right, it's just humbling in

876
00:47:52,160 --> 00:47:55,520
Speaker 1: a kind of nice way. Yeah. Okay, a couple more studies,

877
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 1: real quick. One of them in the fourth one, this

878
00:47:57,680 --> 00:48:01,360
Speaker 1: recreated the early T shirt scenario, but then ask participants

879
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:04,120
Speaker 1: questions to probe how they came up with their estimates.

880
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:06,680
Speaker 1: This is how the authors were trying to test whether

881
00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:10,000
Speaker 1: or not it was an anchoring and adjustment mental process

882
00:48:10,080 --> 00:48:13,920
Speaker 1: that people were using to to get to their mistaken

883
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:18,120
Speaker 1: assumptions about other people's views of them and uh so

884
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:20,839
Speaker 1: their model. Again, this could be it could turn out

885
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:22,640
Speaker 1: that this is not the best way to model the

886
00:48:22,680 --> 00:48:24,400
Speaker 1: thinking going on here. But what they thought at the

887
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:27,759
Speaker 1: time was that people start with their own rich and

888
00:48:27,880 --> 00:48:31,360
Speaker 1: powerful sense of how they appear to others. They realize

889
00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:34,360
Speaker 1: correctly that other people are not paying as much attention

890
00:48:34,440 --> 00:48:36,880
Speaker 1: to them as they pay to themselves. So they may

891
00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:41,000
Speaker 1: be adjust down from their own experience to a hypothetical

892
00:48:41,040 --> 00:48:44,719
Speaker 1: other observer, but they don't adjust enough. So you know,

893
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:47,920
Speaker 1: how important was what I just did? Uh? Well, to me,

894
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:50,320
Speaker 1: it was a ten, But I know other people probably

895
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:52,160
Speaker 1: aren't going to rate it at ten, so I'll say

896
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:55,840
Speaker 1: it's a nine to them, but in reality was maybe

897
00:48:55,840 --> 00:48:58,600
Speaker 1: like a six, yeah, or a four. And then the

898
00:48:58,719 --> 00:49:01,000
Speaker 1: last of the last of the studies, the fifth one.

899
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:03,759
Speaker 1: This one, I think established something that's very important that

900
00:49:03,800 --> 00:49:07,800
Speaker 1: we can come back to in a minute. This tested habituation.

901
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:11,600
Speaker 1: If people are allowed a period to get used to

902
00:49:11,719 --> 00:49:15,560
Speaker 1: wearing the unfamiliar very Manilow T shirt, will they feel

903
00:49:15,920 --> 00:49:19,400
Speaker 1: less self conscious about others noticing it? And the answer

904
00:49:19,480 --> 00:49:21,400
Speaker 1: is yes. If you wear the T shirt for a

905
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:24,239
Speaker 1: while before going in front of other people, you will

906
00:49:24,239 --> 00:49:27,040
Speaker 1: tend to imagine that fewer of them took notice of it.

907
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:29,239
Speaker 1: Then if you just put it on and then go in.

908
00:49:29,560 --> 00:49:32,560
Speaker 1: But of course, in these scenarios, absolutely nothing has changed

909
00:49:32,560 --> 00:49:35,160
Speaker 1: for the observers. The only thing that has changed is you.

910
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:38,480
Speaker 1: The more that you're more used to the shirt yourself,

911
00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:42,040
Speaker 1: you're less conscious of it, so you imagine less consciousness

912
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:44,920
Speaker 1: among others. So in this like if if I don't

913
00:49:44,960 --> 00:49:46,960
Speaker 1: know if anyone has ever had this experience being you know,

914
00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 1: somebody who wears a well worn but offensive T shirt

915
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:55,360
Speaker 1: an inappropriate setting, um, like, you know, they're used to it.

916
00:49:55,680 --> 00:49:59,720
Speaker 1: They're used to the potentially profane statement that is on it.

917
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:03,120
Speaker 1: Everyone else and man, it might not be ready for Yes,

918
00:50:03,200 --> 00:50:05,560
Speaker 1: I think this is actually a various tute observation and

919
00:50:05,560 --> 00:50:07,560
Speaker 1: it will come back to something I want to get

920
00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:10,040
Speaker 1: at right at the end here, should we take another

921
00:50:10,080 --> 00:50:12,240
Speaker 1: break and then when we come back we can discuss

922
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:14,960
Speaker 1: some of the implications of this research. Let's do it.

923
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:20,279
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Thank you. All right, we're back.

924
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:25,160
Speaker 1: We're continuing our discussion here of of the spotlight effect

925
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:27,960
Speaker 1: and uh and of course the various key shirt experiments

926
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:33,520
Speaker 1: things that relate to that explanation. Yeah, so I wanted

927
00:50:33,560 --> 00:50:37,439
Speaker 1: to talk about some commentary on and and implications from

928
00:50:37,480 --> 00:50:40,480
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect to whatever extent this is a real effect.

929
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:42,480
Speaker 1: It does appear like it still stands. I mean, I

930
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:46,759
Speaker 1: would be interested to see some more recent research replicating this,

931
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:49,480
Speaker 1: but but it looks pretty solid to me. One of

932
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 1: the things that the lead author of the study we've

933
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 1: been talking about, Gilovich, Uh, he's noted in another source

934
00:50:56,640 --> 00:50:59,840
Speaker 1: he actually had an article about the spotlight effect for

935
00:51:00,239 --> 00:51:04,120
Speaker 1: the Encyclopedia of Social Psychology edited by Baumeister and Vos,

936
00:51:04,920 --> 00:51:08,800
Speaker 1: And in that article, Gilovich notes that research indicates the

937
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:12,240
Speaker 1: quote people of all ages are prone to the spotlight effect,

938
00:51:12,280 --> 00:51:15,759
Speaker 1: but it appears to be particularly pronounced among adolescents and

939
00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:20,680
Speaker 1: young adults. So as you get older, the spotlight effect

940
00:51:20,760 --> 00:51:24,399
Speaker 1: seems to work less powerfully on your brain. What would

941
00:51:24,440 --> 00:51:27,160
Speaker 1: explain this, Well, one answer might be experienced right in

942
00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 1: Over time, you just learn through experience that people pay

943
00:51:30,719 --> 00:51:33,880
Speaker 1: less attention to you and notice less about you than

944
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:37,000
Speaker 1: you expect them to. And it's possible this does play

945
00:51:37,040 --> 00:51:39,040
Speaker 1: some role. Maybe you get conditioned, you kind of learn

946
00:51:39,120 --> 00:51:42,360
Speaker 1: how things work in life, and you experience less of

947
00:51:42,400 --> 00:51:46,399
Speaker 1: this cognitive bias. But Gilovich identifies a different reason, and

948
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:51,280
Speaker 1: that reason is that social motivation is stronger when you're younger.

949
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:56,400
Speaker 1: Younger people show a heightened consciousness of and concerned for

950
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:01,040
Speaker 1: their standing within social groups. Quote. But having a heightened

951
00:52:01,040 --> 00:52:04,400
Speaker 1: concern with one's social standing means, by its very nature

952
00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 1: that one is vulnerable to having an excessive concern with

953
00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:11,800
Speaker 1: one standing and hints is likely to overestimate the extent

954
00:52:11,880 --> 00:52:15,280
Speaker 1: to which one is the target of others thoughts and attention.

955
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:18,200
Speaker 1: So I'd say to take away from this maybe a

956
00:52:18,239 --> 00:52:21,799
Speaker 1: special message to like younger and like teenage listeners, like

957
00:52:22,400 --> 00:52:25,680
Speaker 1: other people really probably are noticing less about you and

958
00:52:25,719 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 1: thinking less about you than you think they are. As shocking,

959
00:52:28,760 --> 00:52:33,160
Speaker 1: is that maybe to hear. Another thing that that's related

960
00:52:33,239 --> 00:52:35,840
Speaker 1: to this idea that the authors mentioned in their in

961
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 1: their discussion section on their paper is the way that

962
00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:42,360
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect relates to something that's known as the

963
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:46,759
Speaker 1: illusion of transparency. So the illusion of transparency is the

964
00:52:46,800 --> 00:52:51,400
Speaker 1: belief that your internal states are more observable to others

965
00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:55,440
Speaker 1: than they actually are. We often assume that our unspoken

966
00:52:55,560 --> 00:52:59,680
Speaker 1: thoughts and our feelings can be sort of sniffed out

967
00:52:59,760 --> 00:53:03,320
Speaker 1: and discerned by people around us, But that's usually not true,

968
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:05,560
Speaker 1: not not to the extent that we think it is.

969
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:09,400
Speaker 1: And there are examples of this from empirical research. For example,

970
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:13,719
Speaker 1: if you stage a mock negotiation where people are trying to,

971
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:16,280
Speaker 1: you know, negotiate to get to a certain price on something,

972
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:20,239
Speaker 1: people tend to imagine that they have given away more

973
00:53:20,360 --> 00:53:23,960
Speaker 1: information about what they're trying to get than they actually have.

974
00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:27,920
Speaker 1: Another variation is that studies show that a lot of

975
00:53:27,960 --> 00:53:31,560
Speaker 1: times people imagine that other people can tell when they

976
00:53:31,560 --> 00:53:36,640
Speaker 1: are lying, but in reality, people can't actually tell when

977
00:53:36,640 --> 00:53:39,240
Speaker 1: people are lying, or at least I mean some people

978
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:41,480
Speaker 1: maybe can tell some of the time, but most of

979
00:53:41,520 --> 00:53:44,880
Speaker 1: the time, other people cannot tell if you're lying, cannot

980
00:53:44,880 --> 00:53:48,520
Speaker 1: spot your lies with nearly as much accuracy as you

981
00:53:48,600 --> 00:53:51,640
Speaker 1: think they can do with that information what you will,

982
00:53:52,600 --> 00:53:55,719
Speaker 1: I really don't. I think it's it's like, it's a

983
00:53:55,760 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 1: great point because first of all, we all lie, like

984
00:53:58,719 --> 00:54:03,239
Speaker 1: lying is is is part of our communication suite. You know,

985
00:54:03,880 --> 00:54:07,280
Speaker 1: we're gonna individuals are gonna engage in it too, varying degrees,

986
00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:09,439
Speaker 1: but you know, it is important to have that tool

987
00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:11,920
Speaker 1: in your toolbox. You know, if someone shows you a

988
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:15,560
Speaker 1: picture of a baby, and and and and and you're

989
00:54:15,560 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 1: expected to comment upon it, it is generally in your

990
00:54:18,600 --> 00:54:22,080
Speaker 1: best interest to lie. If you think that baby is ugly, right,

991
00:54:22,520 --> 00:54:24,840
Speaker 1: or or at least find some way to uh that

992
00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:29,520
Speaker 1: is not just comedic adherence to truth? Right, you can

993
00:54:29,600 --> 00:54:33,680
Speaker 1: you can find something nice to say that isn't necessarily untrue. Right,

994
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:37,320
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, lying can be, or

995
00:54:37,360 --> 00:54:41,080
Speaker 1: at least only, feel like a high risk act, right.

996
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:43,200
Speaker 1: I mean, no one wants to be caught in a

997
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:47,480
Speaker 1: lie um, even if the stakes are ultimately kind of low.

998
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:49,560
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess maybe even more so at times

999
00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:51,640
Speaker 1: if the stakes are low, because why are you lying

1000
00:54:51,680 --> 00:54:54,280
Speaker 1: about that? Well, like, why didn't you say you didn't

1001
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:57,480
Speaker 1: like this picture of my baby? Or I don't know,

1002
00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:00,799
Speaker 1: let me say, I can't think of specific example, but okay,

1003
00:55:00,840 --> 00:55:03,960
Speaker 1: here's a potential example where if someone says, hey, if

1004
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:05,879
Speaker 1: you're seen Die Hard too, and you're like, oh, yeah,

1005
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:07,920
Speaker 1: it's pretty good, and and maybe the thing is you

1006
00:55:08,160 --> 00:55:10,319
Speaker 1: haven't seen it. You have no interest in saying maybe

1007
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:12,360
Speaker 1: you think that the whole concept sounds kind of stupid,

1008
00:55:12,760 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 1: but you want to be polite about it. And you

1009
00:55:14,560 --> 00:55:16,800
Speaker 1: also don't want to be You don't want the plot

1010
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:18,840
Speaker 1: to have to be explained to you now you know

1011
00:55:19,200 --> 00:55:20,839
Speaker 1: you can see it in the theater. You also don't

1012
00:55:20,840 --> 00:55:24,040
Speaker 1: want to hear your friend Ron surprise it for you.

1013
00:55:24,440 --> 00:55:25,880
Speaker 1: But then if they're like, oh, yeah, what was your

1014
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:29,239
Speaker 1: favorite part? Well, crap. Now this has become a much

1015
00:55:29,280 --> 00:55:34,160
Speaker 1: stickier situation because I'm lying about having seen die Hard too. Yeah.

1016
00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:37,560
Speaker 1: But people tend to assume that, like that fact that

1017
00:55:37,600 --> 00:55:40,560
Speaker 1: they're lying about having seen die Hard too is somehow

1018
00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:44,080
Speaker 1: leaking out of them in an observable way. And in

1019
00:55:44,120 --> 00:55:46,200
Speaker 1: some cases it might be like some people do have

1020
00:55:46,280 --> 00:55:49,640
Speaker 1: big tells when they're lying, but generally that information is

1021
00:55:49,680 --> 00:55:52,319
Speaker 1: not leaking out as much as people imagine it is.

1022
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:55,000
Speaker 1: And I wonder if this is compounded to a certain

1023
00:55:55,000 --> 00:55:58,080
Speaker 1: extent by the lying we observe in media, lying that

1024
00:55:58,239 --> 00:56:01,759
Speaker 1: is either exposed via lifting relevant media like here's a

1025
00:56:01,920 --> 00:56:05,120
Speaker 1: here's one scene of politicians saying one thing, and here's

1026
00:56:05,160 --> 00:56:08,080
Speaker 1: another here's the another bit of footage that shows that

1027
00:56:08,120 --> 00:56:12,480
Speaker 1: they're lying or more often overt lying by a fictional character,

1028
00:56:12,760 --> 00:56:15,240
Speaker 1: which of course is is played up for dramatic effect

1029
00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 1: and is also an artificial situation, you know, and that

1030
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:20,879
Speaker 1: we know they are lying to another care Oh yeah.

1031
00:56:21,080 --> 00:56:25,960
Speaker 1: But it's also like there is there's a stock type

1032
00:56:25,960 --> 00:56:29,239
Speaker 1: of hero in like detective fiction and all that the

1033
00:56:29,280 --> 00:56:32,800
Speaker 1: person who can just magically tell when other people are lying,

1034
00:56:32,920 --> 00:56:38,120
Speaker 1: and that that skill. No, there's a wonderful character in

1035
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:44,040
Speaker 1: the recent Watchman series on HBO looking Glass, Yes, played

1036
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:46,800
Speaker 1: by the great Tim Blake. Nelson has that power. The

1037
00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:50,560
Speaker 1: character has the power, not not Nelson himself. Right, Yeah,

1038
00:56:50,560 --> 00:56:52,760
Speaker 1: And we love characters like that, right. I mean, that's

1039
00:56:52,760 --> 00:56:55,760
Speaker 1: a really fun power to try to see realized in fiction.

1040
00:56:55,840 --> 00:56:59,040
Speaker 1: But uh, just lies are not as easy to sniff

1041
00:56:59,040 --> 00:57:02,400
Speaker 1: out as I mean eat to. To really detect aalize

1042
00:57:02,400 --> 00:57:04,680
Speaker 1: in reality, what you have to try to do is

1043
00:57:04,719 --> 00:57:07,400
Speaker 1: like trap people in contradictions and stuff like ask a

1044
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:10,480
Speaker 1: bunch of follow up questions. It doesn't just leak out

1045
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:12,759
Speaker 1: of your face that yes I'm telling a lie and

1046
00:57:12,800 --> 00:57:15,600
Speaker 1: you can smell it absolutely. And you know, I also

1047
00:57:15,640 --> 00:57:18,880
Speaker 1: think about this in terms of religious upbringing. Um, I

1048
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:20,680
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but the growing up in the

1049
00:57:20,720 --> 00:57:25,240
Speaker 1: sort of pen octagonical teachings of a Protestant church, there

1050
00:57:25,520 --> 00:57:29,080
Speaker 1: was always this idea that God and and also the

1051
00:57:29,120 --> 00:57:31,920
Speaker 1: devil and perhaps other entities like less your angels and

1052
00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:35,360
Speaker 1: demons whatever you were privy to your inner thoughts, you know,

1053
00:57:35,400 --> 00:57:38,200
Speaker 1: the whole idea that it wasn't just what you said

1054
00:57:38,200 --> 00:57:40,120
Speaker 1: and did that made you sinful. It was also what

1055
00:57:40,160 --> 00:57:42,720
Speaker 1: you were thinking about doing, or considering doing, or just

1056
00:57:43,160 --> 00:57:45,720
Speaker 1: entertaining the mental images of doing. So there was this

1057
00:57:45,880 --> 00:57:49,320
Speaker 1: grain notion that your private thoughts are not private at all,

1058
00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:53,240
Speaker 1: at least not so far as supernatural entities are concerned. Yeah,

1059
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:55,560
Speaker 1: that's right, And I guess it is possible that this

1060
00:57:55,560 --> 00:57:58,320
Speaker 1: could have a conditioning effect to make you assume that

1061
00:57:58,400 --> 00:58:01,360
Speaker 1: in general, your private thoughts are not private. Maybe they're

1062
00:58:01,400 --> 00:58:05,840
Speaker 1: observable not just two supernatural entities, but to other regular

1063
00:58:05,960 --> 00:58:08,920
Speaker 1: entities that you interact with every day. Yeah, because I

1064
00:58:08,960 --> 00:58:12,479
Speaker 1: definitely remember at times, certainly when I was younger, sort

1065
00:58:12,520 --> 00:58:14,920
Speaker 1: of freaking out at times about just the idea of

1066
00:58:14,960 --> 00:58:18,080
Speaker 1: other humans being privd in my thoughts, you know, an

1067
00:58:18,120 --> 00:58:21,000
Speaker 1: idea that was probably also compounded by science fiction that's

1068
00:58:21,040 --> 00:58:25,800
Speaker 1: just lousy with psychics, right, um, And also these not

1069
00:58:25,880 --> 00:58:30,960
Speaker 1: quite psychics but just really insightful TV suits. The Hannibal

1070
00:58:31,040 --> 00:58:33,480
Speaker 1: lecter is basically they like look at you and tell

1071
00:58:33,520 --> 00:58:36,840
Speaker 1: your whole life story. Yeah. But but then again, as

1072
00:58:36,880 --> 00:58:39,000
Speaker 1: we've discussed on the show before, this is this sort

1073
00:58:39,040 --> 00:58:42,080
Speaker 1: of fear is not entirely unfounded. Given the potential trajectory

1074
00:58:42,120 --> 00:58:45,720
Speaker 1: of some of our technology. That's true, but that's technology.

1075
00:58:45,760 --> 00:58:49,480
Speaker 1: I mean, normally people are not doing like AI, you know,

1076
00:58:49,600 --> 00:58:52,480
Speaker 1: learning on data sets about your social media use or whatever.

1077
00:58:53,320 --> 00:58:55,480
Speaker 1: There was one more example given about the illusion of

1078
00:58:55,520 --> 00:58:59,920
Speaker 1: transparency that I really liked, which was that people overestimate

1079
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:04,680
Speaker 1: did the extent to which observers could tell whether the

1080
00:59:04,800 --> 00:59:09,720
Speaker 1: drink they were drinking was pleasant or nasty tasting, even

1081
00:59:09,760 --> 00:59:11,960
Speaker 1: though they were supposed to use a neutral facial expression.

1082
00:59:12,000 --> 00:59:14,720
Speaker 1: So you give people drinks this one, this one tastes good,

1083
00:59:14,800 --> 00:59:17,120
Speaker 1: this one tastes disgusting, and you tell them they have

1084
00:59:17,200 --> 00:59:20,400
Speaker 1: to maintain a neutrol facial expression while they drink them.

1085
00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:22,960
Speaker 1: People assumed, oh yeah, people can just read it on

1086
00:59:23,000 --> 00:59:25,600
Speaker 1: my face that you know that that was a nasty one.

1087
00:59:25,760 --> 00:59:27,520
Speaker 1: But it turns out people can't read all that. Well.

1088
00:59:28,680 --> 00:59:30,760
Speaker 1: Good to know when you have your next inner party.

1089
00:59:31,200 --> 00:59:36,280
Speaker 1: Um ye, hopefully it's gonna be the next thing after

1090
00:59:36,360 --> 00:59:39,120
Speaker 1: a competitive eating right now, So right now it's the

1091
00:59:39,160 --> 00:59:42,440
Speaker 1: people who wolfed down like thirty white castles or whatever.

1092
00:59:42,680 --> 00:59:45,240
Speaker 1: The next thing is, how many nasty drinks can you drink?

1093
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:48,640
Speaker 1: I can see it becoming a big hit Okay, one

1094
00:59:48,760 --> 00:59:51,440
Speaker 1: last thing. So the authors of this two thousand paper

1095
00:59:51,520 --> 00:59:56,320
Speaker 1: ask a question, when is the spotlight effect most pronounced

1096
00:59:56,560 --> 00:59:59,080
Speaker 1: and when is it least pronounced? Could there be such

1097
00:59:59,080 --> 01:00:02,360
Speaker 1: a thing as like a verse spotlight effect, a sort

1098
01:00:02,400 --> 01:00:06,120
Speaker 1: of mental cloak of invisibility where other people are noticing

1099
01:00:06,160 --> 01:00:09,960
Speaker 1: you more than you think they are, And the authors think, yeah,

1100
01:00:10,040 --> 01:00:14,000
Speaker 1: this is probably possible. They claim that this would probably

1101
01:00:14,040 --> 01:00:18,960
Speaker 1: correlate with the subject's own consciousness of their appearance or behavior.

1102
01:00:19,520 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 1: So obviously, the more conscious you are of your own

1103
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:26,000
Speaker 1: appearance and behavior, the more conscious of it you imagine

1104
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:28,760
Speaker 1: other people are, and probably vice versa. If you're less

1105
01:00:28,800 --> 01:00:32,680
Speaker 1: conscious of yourself, you're imagining other people are less conscious

1106
01:00:32,680 --> 01:00:35,560
Speaker 1: of you. And so for this reason, it might be

1107
01:00:35,640 --> 01:00:39,680
Speaker 1: correlated somewhat to the novelty of what you're doing or wearing,

1108
01:00:39,800 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 1: or what you look like or how you sound. So

1109
01:00:42,400 --> 01:00:45,360
Speaker 1: remember in the fifth study in in that paper, uh,

1110
01:00:45,400 --> 01:00:48,400
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect was less pronounced for people who had

1111
01:00:48,440 --> 01:00:52,000
Speaker 1: some time to get used to wearing a potentially embarrassing,

1112
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:55,960
Speaker 1: conspicuous T shirt. So it's highly possible that we are

1113
01:00:56,080 --> 01:00:59,160
Speaker 1: most likely to manifest the spotlight effect when we're doing

1114
01:00:59,240 --> 01:01:02,560
Speaker 1: something new or unusual. Well, that's interesting. It kind of

1115
01:01:02,560 --> 01:01:05,480
Speaker 1: ties back to what we're talking about earlier, about when

1116
01:01:05,480 --> 01:01:07,480
Speaker 1: you're about to say something in a meeting and you're

1117
01:01:07,520 --> 01:01:10,400
Speaker 1: putting a lot of cognitive effort into preparing for that

1118
01:01:10,760 --> 01:01:14,400
Speaker 1: and preparing to do something that you don't normally do. Yeah, exactly,

1119
01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:18,080
Speaker 1: takes more effort, it takes up more space in your brain.

1120
01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:20,880
Speaker 1: It's more salient to you, and you assume it's more

1121
01:01:20,920 --> 01:01:24,280
Speaker 1: salient to other people. So it's possible. This isn't proven yet,

1122
01:01:24,320 --> 01:01:28,000
Speaker 1: but it's possible that the inverse effect, where we would

1123
01:01:28,080 --> 01:01:31,840
Speaker 1: underestimate how much other people are noticing our appearance and behavior,

1124
01:01:32,240 --> 01:01:36,200
Speaker 1: it's possible this happens when we are least conscious, meaning

1125
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:42,840
Speaker 1: during highly familiar, routine or automatic behaviors. There's actually an

1126
01:01:42,840 --> 01:01:46,240
Speaker 1: example that has been studied here, uh and the example

1127
01:01:46,480 --> 01:01:49,920
Speaker 1: and I thought this was interesting. So people underestimate the

1128
01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:55,120
Speaker 1: extent to which other people notice their cologne or perfume.

1129
01:01:56,440 --> 01:01:59,840
Speaker 1: So you cover yourself in a fragrance, you become accustomed

1130
01:01:59,840 --> 01:02:03,000
Speaker 1: to that fragrance and you stop noticing it. Right Olfactory

1131
01:02:03,040 --> 01:02:07,240
Speaker 1: desynsitization sets in. You no longer smell it yourself, so

1132
01:02:07,280 --> 01:02:11,000
Speaker 1: it basically disappears for you, but other people smell it

1133
01:02:11,120 --> 01:02:14,440
Speaker 1: even if you don't expect them to. Yeah, yeah, I

1134
01:02:14,440 --> 01:02:18,280
Speaker 1: think we all have had that experience with with someone

1135
01:02:18,280 --> 01:02:22,800
Speaker 1: who has just outrageously powerful perfume, you know, like sometimes

1136
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:26,840
Speaker 1: the extent that announces their presence. Yes, yes, sometimes people

1137
01:02:26,880 --> 01:02:29,880
Speaker 1: just lather up. And this makes me wonder about whether

1138
01:02:30,080 --> 01:02:35,040
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect is especially salient for appearance, because, of course,

1139
01:02:35,080 --> 01:02:39,200
Speaker 1: we normally can't really see ourselves when we're going about

1140
01:02:39,200 --> 01:02:41,960
Speaker 1: our lives. If we're in a regular business meeting talking,

1141
01:02:42,320 --> 01:02:44,240
Speaker 1: we can't see our face. We might be able to

1142
01:02:44,280 --> 01:02:46,000
Speaker 1: see our bodies if we look down at it, but

1143
01:02:46,040 --> 01:02:48,160
Speaker 1: we're probably not looking down. We're probably looking up at

1144
01:02:48,200 --> 01:02:53,400
Speaker 1: the room. But we're also frequently suddenly reminded of our

1145
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:56,080
Speaker 1: appearance when we walk in front of a mirror or

1146
01:02:56,240 --> 01:02:59,000
Speaker 1: log into a web meeting or something. So it might

1147
01:02:59,000 --> 01:03:02,360
Speaker 1: be the sort of perf mix of obliviousness in your

1148
01:03:02,360 --> 01:03:07,280
Speaker 1: regular behaviors and then the sudden shocking reminders of oh yeah,

1149
01:03:07,440 --> 01:03:10,440
Speaker 1: I look like this external people, and that kind of

1150
01:03:10,520 --> 01:03:13,760
Speaker 1: keeps you on your toes. Like what if after putting

1151
01:03:13,800 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 1: on some cologne, you could suddenly smell it intensely again

1152
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:21,120
Speaker 1: every hour or so yeah, I mean that's the mag

1153
01:03:21,200 --> 01:03:22,560
Speaker 1: You put it like that, it almost sounds like it

1154
01:03:22,600 --> 01:03:27,480
Speaker 1: would be helpful. But I don't feel like our experiences

1155
01:03:27,520 --> 01:03:30,960
Speaker 1: with our own footage in a zoom call or what

1156
01:03:31,040 --> 01:03:33,800
Speaker 1: have you is necessarily helpful. It really feels like sort

1157
01:03:33,840 --> 01:03:37,400
Speaker 1: of built in egocentric feedback. Yeah, because there's too much

1158
01:03:37,400 --> 01:03:40,840
Speaker 1: of it. It's just constantly there. So anyway, if we

1159
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:43,640
Speaker 1: assume that the spotlight effect is real, it is a

1160
01:03:44,320 --> 01:03:47,200
Speaker 1: something that's generally true about people might not be true

1161
01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:49,480
Speaker 1: to the same extent for everyone. But if this effect

1162
01:03:49,560 --> 01:03:54,320
Speaker 1: is correctly observed, what would the implications for our lives be. Well,

1163
01:03:54,680 --> 01:03:57,680
Speaker 1: Gilovich has actually gotten kind of kind of sweet about this,

1164
01:03:57,760 --> 01:04:00,640
Speaker 1: so uh. He notes that, you know, there are studies

1165
01:04:00,680 --> 01:04:03,720
Speaker 1: that show that later in life, most people report that

1166
01:04:03,840 --> 01:04:07,880
Speaker 1: their major regrets about their lives concern things that they

1167
01:04:07,920 --> 01:04:10,640
Speaker 1: failed to do, rather than things that they did. It's

1168
01:04:10,680 --> 01:04:12,520
Speaker 1: not the same for everybody, but that is a much

1169
01:04:12,520 --> 01:04:15,280
Speaker 1: more common framing, and you've probably read about this before.

1170
01:04:15,320 --> 01:04:18,960
Speaker 1: This is widely observed. So many of the things that

1171
01:04:19,000 --> 01:04:23,760
Speaker 1: people want to do but never do, they hold back

1172
01:04:23,840 --> 01:04:26,720
Speaker 1: from them out of a sense of self consciousness or

1173
01:04:26,760 --> 01:04:30,200
Speaker 1: anxiety about how people are going to perceive us, you know,

1174
01:04:30,320 --> 01:04:33,520
Speaker 1: for doing these things. So one easy example might be

1175
01:04:33,600 --> 01:04:36,080
Speaker 1: that you failed to ever take up playing a musical

1176
01:04:36,120 --> 01:04:40,520
Speaker 1: instrument because you fear that other people will judge you

1177
01:04:40,640 --> 01:04:44,400
Speaker 1: as unskilled at playing it, especially at first. And so

1178
01:04:44,440 --> 01:04:47,040
Speaker 1: the research on the spotlight effects suggests that we are

1179
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:52,440
Speaker 1: were very likely to be overestimating, perhaps even grossly overestimating,

1180
01:04:52,840 --> 01:04:56,120
Speaker 1: how much people would even notice whatever it is that

1181
01:04:56,200 --> 01:04:59,360
Speaker 1: we're afraid of doing. And the authors of the study

1182
01:04:59,440 --> 01:05:02,000
Speaker 1: right quote. The lesson of this research then is that

1183
01:05:02,040 --> 01:05:05,400
Speaker 1: we might all have fewer regrets if we properly understood

1184
01:05:05,440 --> 01:05:11,439
Speaker 1: how much attention or inattention our actions actually draw from others. Yeah,

1185
01:05:11,480 --> 01:05:13,800
Speaker 1: that is it is kind of a sweet twist on it.

1186
01:05:13,920 --> 01:05:16,520
Speaker 1: You know, it's like saying, look, go go for it,

1187
01:05:16,720 --> 01:05:19,440
Speaker 1: go through you live your dream, because nobody's really going

1188
01:05:19,440 --> 01:05:22,160
Speaker 1: to pay that much attention even when it falls flat

1189
01:05:22,440 --> 01:05:26,240
Speaker 1: dance like nobody's watching, because probably nobody is watching, or

1190
01:05:26,280 --> 01:05:29,160
Speaker 1: if they are watching, they might not even remember. I mean,

1191
01:05:29,200 --> 01:05:33,760
Speaker 1: it's just like you're you're probably way over concerned about

1192
01:05:33,800 --> 01:05:38,000
Speaker 1: possible minor faux pause or looking weird or awkward. Yeah,

1193
01:05:38,320 --> 01:05:41,000
Speaker 1: like they're probably even if they're they're watching you, and

1194
01:05:41,040 --> 01:05:43,240
Speaker 1: they're thinking about it. They're probably thinking, oh, man, do

1195
01:05:43,440 --> 01:05:46,320
Speaker 1: I look like that when I danced by myself? What

1196
01:05:46,360 --> 01:05:49,960
Speaker 1: do I look like when I danced by myself? This? Uh,

1197
01:05:50,280 --> 01:05:54,400
Speaker 1: this reminds me. That's talking about situations where you realize

1198
01:05:54,440 --> 01:05:57,479
Speaker 1: that it may be perceived as as weird by other people,

1199
01:05:57,520 --> 01:06:00,800
Speaker 1: were embarrassing by other people. So so I've mentioned Star

1200
01:06:00,800 --> 01:06:04,200
Speaker 1: Wars like three times so far. I'm mostly tracking the

1201
01:06:04,200 --> 01:06:05,800
Speaker 1: house here, and me and my son are super in

1202
01:06:05,880 --> 01:06:09,080
Speaker 1: Star Wars. He has a couple of lightsabers and he'll

1203
01:06:09,320 --> 01:06:11,280
Speaker 1: he'll often ask me to go out to to have

1204
01:06:11,560 --> 01:06:14,200
Speaker 1: a lightsaber battle with him, which is something we have

1205
01:06:14,280 --> 01:06:17,720
Speaker 1: to do outside because otherwise we would destroy things in

1206
01:06:17,720 --> 01:06:19,320
Speaker 1: the house. And we have to do it in the

1207
01:06:19,320 --> 01:06:22,560
Speaker 1: front yard because the mosquitoes are too bad in the backyard. Um,

1208
01:06:22,720 --> 01:06:25,000
Speaker 1: so we'll have this fight in the front yard. People

1209
01:06:25,080 --> 01:06:27,440
Speaker 1: driving by we'll be able to see it, which generally

1210
01:06:27,480 --> 01:06:29,600
Speaker 1: I imagine they'll say, oh, well, there's a dad having

1211
01:06:29,640 --> 01:06:32,920
Speaker 1: a lightsaber battle with with his son. That's great, the

1212
01:06:32,960 --> 01:06:36,360
Speaker 1: sweetest thing they'll see all day. But occasionally, my son,

1213
01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:39,000
Speaker 1: who's much he gets so into this. Occasionally he'll have

1214
01:06:39,080 --> 01:06:40,880
Speaker 1: to run over to the side of the house to

1215
01:06:41,160 --> 01:06:44,520
Speaker 1: like fight a pretend droid or something, which leaves me

1216
01:06:44,640 --> 01:06:49,000
Speaker 1: in the front yard apparently by myself fighting pretend droids.

1217
01:06:49,440 --> 01:06:53,080
Speaker 1: And I realized when that happens, people may drive by

1218
01:06:53,120 --> 01:06:56,920
Speaker 1: and think that I have lost my mind, um, which

1219
01:06:57,120 --> 01:06:59,760
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm I'm okay, I'm ultimately okay. I

1220
01:07:00,040 --> 01:07:02,360
Speaker 1: think you got anything to worry about. Man. That's that

1221
01:07:02,360 --> 01:07:05,000
Speaker 1: that that's going to be the ray of sunshine in

1222
01:07:05,040 --> 01:07:08,760
Speaker 1: the in the day of so many people driving by. Seriously,

1223
01:07:08,760 --> 01:07:11,480
Speaker 1: if I was driving by and I saw uh, and

1224
01:07:11,520 --> 01:07:13,680
Speaker 1: I saw some people having a lightsaber duel in their

1225
01:07:13,680 --> 01:07:16,440
Speaker 1: front yard, I would be like, that's you know, there's hope,

1226
01:07:16,880 --> 01:07:19,600
Speaker 1: a new hope. Maybe maybe that's what I'm doing. I'm

1227
01:07:19,640 --> 01:07:22,240
Speaker 1: giving people hope that they're like, I didn't realize I

1228
01:07:22,280 --> 01:07:23,800
Speaker 1: could do that as a grown up, that I could

1229
01:07:23,840 --> 01:07:27,200
Speaker 1: just uh get a lightsaber and uh and start having

1230
01:07:27,240 --> 01:07:29,400
Speaker 1: pretend battles in my front yard. I'm gonna do it.

1231
01:07:29,480 --> 01:07:33,200
Speaker 1: That's gonna make this quarantine situation a lot easier. Along

1232
01:07:33,200 --> 01:07:35,920
Speaker 1: the same lines, I am extremely in favor of adults

1233
01:07:35,960 --> 01:07:40,240
Speaker 1: climbing trees. There's this bizarre idea that adults shouldn't climb trees.

1234
01:07:40,240 --> 01:07:43,360
Speaker 1: Climbing trees is for children. Why adults should climb trees

1235
01:07:43,400 --> 01:07:45,720
Speaker 1: all the time? I love a good climbing tree. It's

1236
01:07:45,720 --> 01:07:47,800
Speaker 1: a good skill to have. I see people in movies

1237
01:07:47,840 --> 01:07:49,560
Speaker 1: having to do it all the time to escape, like

1238
01:07:49,640 --> 01:07:52,840
Speaker 1: you know, robot and monsters and whatnot. Yeah, so go

1239
01:07:52,960 --> 01:07:56,560
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, those like those Boston Dynamics dog robots

1240
01:07:56,600 --> 01:07:58,240
Speaker 1: are coming for you. Where are you gonna go? You

1241
01:07:58,280 --> 01:08:00,280
Speaker 1: gotta get up the oak, like suddenly you got to

1242
01:08:00,280 --> 01:08:03,480
Speaker 1: climate tree and you haven't been practicing for twenty or

1243
01:08:03,520 --> 01:08:07,040
Speaker 1: thirty years. Good luck? And then what if you have

1244
01:08:07,120 --> 01:08:10,040
Speaker 1: to fight it with a lifesaver? Also, you've got to

1245
01:08:10,160 --> 01:08:13,280
Speaker 1: keep these skills war you know, these are the skills

1246
01:08:13,320 --> 01:08:15,920
Speaker 1: one needs to survive in the waste land. Alright, Well,

1247
01:08:15,920 --> 01:08:18,400
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close it out there. I

1248
01:08:18,479 --> 01:08:20,200
Speaker 1: think we have. There's a lot of material in here

1249
01:08:20,200 --> 01:08:24,320
Speaker 1: for everyone to think about, and we of course await

1250
01:08:24,840 --> 01:08:27,680
Speaker 1: listener responses to this. How how do you perceive the

1251
01:08:27,720 --> 01:08:30,280
Speaker 1: spotlight effect in your own life or in the lives

1252
01:08:30,280 --> 01:08:33,479
Speaker 1: of others? Has this forced you to to rethink anything

1253
01:08:33,960 --> 01:08:35,760
Speaker 1: going on in the world around you, or how you

1254
01:08:35,800 --> 01:08:41,559
Speaker 1: indeed engage in your daily or weekly conference digital conference

1255
01:08:41,600 --> 01:08:44,240
Speaker 1: calls for them. In the meantime, if you'd like to

1256
01:08:44,320 --> 01:08:47,000
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

1257
01:08:47,040 --> 01:08:50,280
Speaker 1: including that when we mentioned anchor in the mind dealing

1258
01:08:50,280 --> 01:08:54,280
Speaker 1: with anchoring, you can find those wherever you get your podcasts.

1259
01:08:54,320 --> 01:08:57,160
Speaker 1: I will say this, you can certainly find our our

1260
01:08:57,280 --> 01:08:59,680
Speaker 1: I heart radio listing by going to stuff to Blow

1261
01:08:59,720 --> 01:09:02,639
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. And if you go there, you'll

1262
01:09:02,640 --> 01:09:05,280
Speaker 1: see a little part of the page and says show links.

1263
01:09:05,600 --> 01:09:07,559
Speaker 1: There is a store link there, and if you go

1264
01:09:07,640 --> 01:09:13,559
Speaker 1: there you will find T shirts that are bringing it around.

1265
01:09:14,120 --> 01:09:16,559
Speaker 1: And some of them are cool. Uh, some of them

1266
01:09:16,560 --> 01:09:19,160
Speaker 1: I would personally be embarrassed to wear. You'll have to

1267
01:09:19,200 --> 01:09:21,960
Speaker 1: look at them and trying to decide which which design

1268
01:09:22,040 --> 01:09:24,360
Speaker 1: is which. But we charge every listener to buy one

1269
01:09:24,439 --> 01:09:30,160
Speaker 1: cool T shirt and one extremely embarrassing T shirt. Yes,

1270
01:09:30,320 --> 01:09:32,720
Speaker 1: well we have both there, so go check them out

1271
01:09:32,960 --> 01:09:35,240
Speaker 1: if you so desire. Um. I don't know. None of

1272
01:09:35,280 --> 01:09:37,360
Speaker 1: them have very manilol on the front though, so you

1273
01:09:37,400 --> 01:09:39,360
Speaker 1: need to do a separate image search to see what

1274
01:09:39,400 --> 01:09:42,360
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. There. Huge thanks as always to our

1275
01:09:42,439 --> 01:09:46,080
Speaker 1: excellent audio producers Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like

1276
01:09:46,120 --> 01:09:47,840
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this

1277
01:09:47,880 --> 01:09:50,400
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

1278
01:09:50,720 --> 01:09:52,760
Speaker 1: or just to say hi. You can email us at

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Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com s.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the

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Speaker 1: i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

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Speaker 1: me to your favorite shows.