Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode
Speaker 1: of the show. This one originally published on August four,
Speaker 1: and it is about a psychological phenomenon called the spotlight effect.
Speaker 1: I think this one, this one may have come out
Speaker 1: of us thinking about being on zoom calls all the
Speaker 1: time last summer, which at least of the time we're
Speaker 1: recording this intro is still an ongoing, uh journey. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, that was definitely on our minds back then,
Speaker 1: and and this episode came out of it. But I
Speaker 1: ended up thinking this was a really interesting subject. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely goes beyond the zoom realm. So if you
Speaker 1: were by the time you listen to this, if you
Speaker 1: were outside of the zoom realm. If if this seems
Speaker 1: like an artifact of the past, uh, you know, don't worry.
Speaker 1: The spotlight effect is very much in play in the
Speaker 1: world that you're living in. Hello. Everyone, This is Seth,
Speaker 1: the audio producer for Stuff to Blow Your Mind. And
Speaker 1: there's just a quick note before we start. Myself, Robert
Speaker 1: and Joe, we are still recording in isolation because it
Speaker 1: is the summer of and well, this episode, we had
Speaker 1: a bit of a problem with Robert's microphone. It was
Speaker 1: a one time thing. It shouldn't happen again in the future.
Speaker 1: But for this episode, it's gonna sound a little bit
Speaker 1: like Joe is kind of talking to a tv VCR
Speaker 1: combo and like a bunker somewhere. But well, I guess
Speaker 1: that's technically kind of what we're actually doing. But anyway, anyway,
Speaker 1: point is this is a one time incident. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: all still very understandable, very easy to listen to in
Speaker 1: this episode of Cleaned it Up as best I can,
Speaker 1: And next time it'll sound just like normal, we promise. Thanks,
Speaker 1: enjoy the show. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. In today we're gonna be talking about mostly
Speaker 1: focusing on a classic psychology paper about an effect in
Speaker 1: uh in a kind of social cognitive bias known as
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect. But to get into this subject, I
Speaker 1: wanted to start off by thinking about something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people have found themselves doing in the past
Speaker 1: few months of people who maybe this wasn't part of
Speaker 1: your job very much recently, but now you spend a
Speaker 1: significant portion of your day in web video meetings, staring
Speaker 1: at little boxes of your co workers faces on a
Speaker 1: computer screen, or maybe just staring at your own face
Speaker 1: a lot. Yes, uh, I mean, in fact, right now
Speaker 1: is Joe and I are recording this. We are using
Speaker 1: a Zoom call. We are using a Zoom conference room
Speaker 1: to communicate with each other, and then we're using some
Speaker 1: other programs and what not to to actually record it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, a lot of people are having to You
Speaker 1: may be using something different. You might be using what
Speaker 1: there's like Google meet, Microsoft meeting, like Facebook flop. I
Speaker 1: mean they're like a million of them, right, I mean
Speaker 1: this is an optagram. Yeah, it's a growth industry figuring
Speaker 1: out and it makes sense, right. We need to still
Speaker 1: be able to connect with each other, We still need
Speaker 1: to have meaningful meetings and all of those less meaningful
Speaker 1: meetings and in order to keep the gears of business
Speaker 1: grinding away. Right. Yeah. And one of the strange things
Speaker 1: I've noticed, and I've read other people noticing the exact
Speaker 1: same thing, is that you might expect that being able
Speaker 1: to do a meeting from your home over the internet
Speaker 1: would be maybe less exhausting than a meeting in person,
Speaker 1: but somehow I have not found it to be the case.
Speaker 1: I found that like, video chats can be just intensely draining,
Speaker 1: like after they're over, you feel like you've been lifting
Speaker 1: weights or something. Uh. And part of what's going on
Speaker 1: here I found very much embodied in the spirit of
Speaker 1: an article that I saw link to. It's it's just
Speaker 1: a medium post, and I want to be very clear
Speaker 1: that I'm not passing judgment on the author here, that
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with with this person, but the title of
Speaker 1: it just gave me chills. And the title of this
Speaker 1: medium post was how to fake eye contact during video
Speaker 1: chats and why it's important. Yes, this this was this
Speaker 1: is interesting. This is what a medium article by Alexa Curtis,
Speaker 1: and they made three key suggestions here. The first one
Speaker 1: is to use a webcam even if no one else
Speaker 1: is okay. The second is trick yourself into looking at
Speaker 1: the camera instead of at the screen impossible, and then
Speaker 1: tape your prompts, your notes, whatever to your monitor as
Speaker 1: much as possible instead of having to refer to like
Speaker 1: a notepad or something. Yeah, the suggest sin is like
Speaker 1: make a little fake face to go around the webcam
Speaker 1: box so that we're looking into the camera instead of
Speaker 1: at the screen. But I just don't think it's like
Speaker 1: if your face is played back on the screen, unless
Speaker 1: you are able to turn your face off for yourself,
Speaker 1: you just you're not going to be able to help it,
Speaker 1: are you. Yeah. I actually, before I read this, I
Speaker 1: kind of thought because I'd catch myself doing this. Um,
Speaker 1: And now now I should say that I am lucky
Speaker 1: and that I do not have to set through just
Speaker 1: hours and hours of meetings today and zoom. I have
Speaker 1: friends who are definitely stuck in that boat, and they
Speaker 1: seem exhausted by it. We use zoom in these recordings,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, we're not actually engaging in
Speaker 1: the video part of it. We we have other stuff,
Speaker 1: We have notes, stuff that we're looking at when we're recording.
Speaker 1: But I have found this to be the case with
Speaker 1: my My Dungeons and Dragons group, which used to meet
Speaker 1: in person, but now it's forced to meet via zoom,
Speaker 1: and we have this, you know, and it's like a
Speaker 1: two or three hour zoom called you know, like a
Speaker 1: three hour zoom called it would be once a week,
Speaker 1: you know, to do Dungeon and Dragons. And for some reason,
Speaker 1: I've been noticing that I've just I felt kind of
Speaker 1: worn out by it towards the end of of the night,
Speaker 1: um in ways that I wasn't worn out previously meeting
Speaker 1: in person, Like I just kind of felt zapped by it,
Speaker 1: like if we were battling something. At the end, I'm
Speaker 1: just kind of going through the motions. I'm just not
Speaker 1: feeling it anymore at that point. Yeah, the exact same experience.
Speaker 1: I've done social stuff via video calls. I've also been
Speaker 1: doing a D and D campaign, my my first ever
Speaker 1: by the way, Thank you over over Zoom, and it's
Speaker 1: been a lot of fun. But yes, it is. It
Speaker 1: is kind of exhausting to just participate in the in
Speaker 1: the eyeball Tennis of of the different video faces on
Speaker 1: the screen. Something about it hooks its claws into your
Speaker 1: brain and just pulls and stretches and kind of needs
Speaker 1: your brain like a ball of dough. Now four only,
Speaker 1: I don't know how your campaign is going, but with ours,
Speaker 1: were also using a couple other resources, were Reason to
Speaker 1: Discord Forum and we're using role twenty to pull up
Speaker 1: maps and such. So maybe maybe we should upgrade our technology.
Speaker 1: It's worth looking into. But but basically we have some
Speaker 1: other things to captivate our eyes during this this process.
Speaker 1: I guess one of the things about a straight up
Speaker 1: like business zoom meeting is a lot of times you're
Speaker 1: just stuck in those Brady bunch um cubes, right, You're
Speaker 1: just you're just stuck with all these little screen pictures
Speaker 1: of people and uh and some Sometimes you have it
Speaker 1: set to where one will take dominance over the others,
Speaker 1: but you may just be looking at a wall of
Speaker 1: people's faces. And then you're thinking about again this point
Speaker 1: of should I be making eye contact with everybody? Should
Speaker 1: I be focusing on trying to be the most presentable,
Speaker 1: you know, the most professional looking, Like when they look
Speaker 1: at my little box, it's like watching a TV broadcast
Speaker 1: and I'm making direct eye contact with them, maybe by
Speaker 1: because i have a little sticky smiley face that I've
Speaker 1: put up at the top of my computer, by the camera.
Speaker 1: There are multiple ways in which this type of interaction
Speaker 1: is not normal. I mean, of course, it's not normal
Speaker 1: to be interfacing through technology at all. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: kind of strange that you're not looking at the person,
Speaker 1: but you're looking at the screen, so the eye contact
Speaker 1: is off. I understand that that point in the article.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it is not normal to
Speaker 1: be able to see yourself while you're talking to people.
Speaker 1: I can imagine if you know you were always talking
Speaker 1: to people with a mirror in your hand that was
Speaker 1: reflecting your face. Yeah, people would rightfully think you were insane,
Speaker 1: think that was how like self obsessed you are. But
Speaker 1: you go or I don't know, or afraid of Gorgon's
Speaker 1: that you always had to have a mirror in your hand.
Speaker 1: And yet that's the reality we find ourselves. And I
Speaker 1: know this is this is not just like our particular
Speaker 1: reaction to this. This is something that that I've read
Speaker 1: about in multiple popular articles and also not just an
Speaker 1: obscure scientific articles. Like there was an article I came
Speaker 1: across and I think it was Business Insider that was
Speaker 1: called like why you can't stop up steering at yourself
Speaker 1: in zoom calls? Yes, this was by Shia Fetter titled
Speaker 1: a cyber psychologist explains why you can't stop steering yourself
Speaker 1: on zoom calls? And everyone else is probably doing the same, um,
Speaker 1: which I I have caught myself doing this, sometimes during
Speaker 1: donuts and dragons, sometimes during work calls, where you know
Speaker 1: you want to check in, you want to see how
Speaker 1: you were presenting to the rest of the world. But
Speaker 1: then it's often easy to sort of, you know, to
Speaker 1: to to. You're looking at these wall of faces, and
Speaker 1: then you decide to maximize your own, and you're like,
Speaker 1: all right, let's see, how's the light hitting me, what's
Speaker 1: my hair doing right now? How presented my smiling weird?
Speaker 1: My smiling weird? Do I look do I look engage?
Speaker 1: Or do I look as bored as I feel? You know? Um?
Speaker 1: And so that's what this article gets into a little
Speaker 1: of that year. So m the article discusses some key
Speaker 1: points made by cyber psychologist Andrew Franklin. So the first
Speaker 1: one is that in general, adolescents tend to suffer from
Speaker 1: the imagine very audience delusion, the idea that people in
Speaker 1: the surroundings are really paying attention to every move they make,
Speaker 1: and this often follows us into adulthood as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this I think is pretty close to or perhaps
Speaker 1: even just another name for the main issue we're going
Speaker 1: to be focusing on today and otherwise known as the
Speaker 1: spotlight effect. Yes, now, one thing about this, this point
Speaker 1: about adolescents. Uh, I mean, this is of course terrifying
Speaker 1: to think about, given the nature of social media, which
Speaker 1: is pretty much predicated on this sort of celebrity aspiring
Speaker 1: notion of a constant audience. And uh and and one
Speaker 1: tends to drift to extremes and reaction to that, right,
Speaker 1: this feeling that every word I put on the Internet,
Speaker 1: or every video, every whatever is vitally important. It will
Speaker 1: be viewed by potentially everyone in the world. Yes, You're
Speaker 1: not just constantly on view, you are constantly being reviewed,
Speaker 1: is the perception. Yeah, I know obviously that's it's gonna
Speaker 1: vary from person person, or some people are gonna use
Speaker 1: social media in a way that hasn't far more limited
Speaker 1: scope only close friends or maybe even family, maybe just
Speaker 1: one person can see you know. But but but yeah,
Speaker 1: it does make me wonder and this would have to
Speaker 1: be a you know, a discussion for another time, like
Speaker 1: just what what what is happening when this spotlight effect,
Speaker 1: this imaginary audience delusion is playing uh into our use
Speaker 1: of social media. Yeah, but also so this psychology professor
Speaker 1: Andrew Franklin also makes the point that, like, it's not
Speaker 1: just an illusion that like video chats are actually exhausting. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: to make the point of video chats are more stressful
Speaker 1: than in person meetings, and a big part of that
Speaker 1: is just everything is more distracted, more fragmented, and we
Speaker 1: have muted or severely lessened nonverbal communicative skills. So you
Speaker 1: think of a lot of this is kind of an
Speaker 1: overstatement of the obvious. But you can do far less
Speaker 1: with your body language, not only your overt bodyline, which
Speaker 1: like talking with your hands and waving down people to
Speaker 1: the other side of the table, but in terms of
Speaker 1: just having a bodily awareness of what everyone is doing
Speaker 1: and how they are sort of reacting to what's going on,
Speaker 1: and if someone else is about to speak or needs
Speaker 1: to speak. Yes, And it's actually hard to tell who's
Speaker 1: looking at who, Like you can assume if there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of Brady bunch boxes that people are probably
Speaker 1: looking if they're not looking at themselves, they're probably looking
Speaker 1: at the person who's currently talking, but maybe not. You
Speaker 1: can't tell. Yeah, And and it's also weird to think,
Speaker 1: like I guess maybe some of you out there had
Speaker 1: more of like a you know, rules of order kind
Speaker 1: of a upbringing or or you know, you have some
Speaker 1: more training and think, Okay, this is how this is
Speaker 1: how a business meeting goes, this is how a work
Speaker 1: meeting operates. But I feel for my part, a lot
Speaker 1: of it's just kind of you just learn it to go,
Speaker 1: just sort of figure out what is the culture of
Speaker 1: this group and this meeting, and and how am I
Speaker 1: supposed to fit in? And then to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: it feels like we've had to relearn all of that
Speaker 1: or augment our understand ending of that based on the
Speaker 1: limitations of the technology. Yeah, I think that's totally right,
Speaker 1: and and I would I would emphasize yet again that
Speaker 1: not all digital socialization skills are are interchangeable or transferable
Speaker 1: to one another. So you might have been well acclimatized
Speaker 1: to the social skills one needs in order to interact
Speaker 1: through a different type of mediated social media like like
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter or something like that, and still not
Speaker 1: really have any skills for how to interact via a
Speaker 1: video chat. It's just like a different set of skills,
Speaker 1: a different set of things to get used to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a different talking stick entirely now now. Franklin also
Speaker 1: drives something that given the strain of keeping up with
Speaker 1: everyone's tiny boxes and concern over how you yourself look
Speaker 1: in your box, you might easily find yourself just looking
Speaker 1: at yourself, staring into the digital mirror and fixating on
Speaker 1: how you appear to friends, co workers, and bosses and
Speaker 1: and Franklin maintains that this means you're likely overwhelmed by proceedings,
Speaker 1: which which I totally get. Again, even with the low
Speaker 1: stakes confines of a Dungeons and Dragons, you know, nothing
Speaker 1: huge is on the line here, But by the end
Speaker 1: of the of the session again, I often find myself
Speaker 1: kind of zapped in ways that I never felt before
Speaker 1: within person gaming. And even though we're staring into that
Speaker 1: digital reflection of our own face, Franklin stresses that people
Speaker 1: are ultimately not fixating on you like you think they are.
Speaker 1: They are not setting there watching you and you know,
Speaker 1: dissecting everything about your appearance and in your background and
Speaker 1: what your face is doing it in any given set. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: They're probably much more likely fixating on themselves the same
Speaker 1: way you are fixating on yourself. Uh. And so this
Speaker 1: brings us back to the cognitive bias that we're gonna
Speaker 1: be focusing on in today's episode, also known as the
Speaker 1: spotlight effect. And this effect is very interesting because, on
Speaker 1: one hand, I think it's one of the simplest psychological
Speaker 1: phenomena we've ever talked about on the show. It's actually
Speaker 1: very simple to or it's very straightforward in a way.
Speaker 1: But it's one of those things where if you really
Speaker 1: internalize it, it's implications could be kind of life changing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of these things that doesn't I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: that it really like changes the nature of your reality,
Speaker 1: but it brings certain aspects of it into maybe sharper focus.
Speaker 1: You might realize, Oh, well, okay, that explains some of
Speaker 1: the things I feel when I am in a meeting
Speaker 1: or you know, just walking around. Um uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in a public space or or whatever the case may be. Um,
Speaker 1: I do feel like it does it does It does
Speaker 1: feel like a revelation of it in its own way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the main paper that I wanted to focus on
Speaker 1: today was published in the year two thousand in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Thomas Gilovich, Victoria
Speaker 1: who Staid Medvec and Kenneth Savitsky, and it's called the
Speaker 1: spotlight effect in social judgment, an ecocentric bias, and estimates
Speaker 1: of the salience of one zone actions and appearance. You
Speaker 1: can pretty easily find a full PDF of this online
Speaker 1: if you want to read it. And this is a
Speaker 1: highly cited paper. It has been referred to many many
Speaker 1: times in the years since as a kind of seminal
Speaker 1: work on this on this social cognitive bias. So the
Speaker 1: authors begin with some anecdotal observations, and these observations are
Speaker 1: that for both good and ill, it often seems like
Speaker 1: stuff you expect other people to notice and recall about
Speaker 1: you really goes unnoticed. Uh. And also on the good side,
Speaker 1: that might be like something smart that you said in
Speaker 1: a discussion group. You're like really pleased with yourself that like, oh,
Speaker 1: I had that really good insight or I made that
Speaker 1: really funny joke, and then it turns out later that
Speaker 1: nobody else seems to recall that you said anything. Or
Speaker 1: perhaps this often actually happens in athletic contexts, where people
Speaker 1: will make a really good odd in a basketball game
Speaker 1: or something, and they will expect people to remember that
Speaker 1: they did that. But then maybe it turns out that
Speaker 1: nobody really noticed. It just kind of was one of
Speaker 1: the goals in a game in which many goals were scored.
Speaker 1: And as frustrating as this can be, it can also
Speaker 1: kind of be a relief that it works the other
Speaker 1: way to People often don't seem to have noticed when
Speaker 1: you make what feels like a really obvious mistake faux
Speaker 1: paw on a first meeting, or when you misspeak and
Speaker 1: what feels like an embarrassing way, or that time you
Speaker 1: had spinach in your teeth, like you obsess over that
Speaker 1: and you're afraid it's going to completely ruin your reputation,
Speaker 1: that everybody's gonna remember you for that thing forever. But
Speaker 1: a lot of times it seems like maybe nobody even noticed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the dual nature of this particular revelation, I think ultimately
Speaker 1: it is positive because, yeah, maybe it means you're not
Speaker 1: as important as you thought you were. Maybe you're not
Speaker 1: as a it's a it's explosive the personality as you
Speaker 1: thought you were. But on the other hand, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the steaks a little bit lower every time you
Speaker 1: open your mouth. Yeah, Yeah, that's the hypothesis at the
Speaker 1: heart of this paper that these anecdotal observations are indicative
Speaker 1: of a real trend that can be measured that, in general,
Speaker 1: humans have an ecocentric bias that causes us to believe
Speaker 1: that our actions and our appearance are much more salient
Speaker 1: and notable to other people than they really are. Quote.
Speaker 1: People tend to believe that more people take a note
Speaker 1: of their actions and appearance than is actually the case.
Speaker 1: We dubbed this putative phenomenon the spotlight effect. People tend
Speaker 1: to believe that the social spotlight shines more brightly on
Speaker 1: them than it really does. Yeah, this is insightful, and
Speaker 1: I think we can all match this up pretty easily,
Speaker 1: first of all with our own experiences, but also with
Speaker 1: some of the ideas that we've discussed on the show before.
Speaker 1: Uh specifically, First of all, there's the self narrative aspect
Speaker 1: of our inner thoughts. You know, through the inner workings
Speaker 1: of consciousness, were constantly weaving together a story about who
Speaker 1: we are and how we fit into the world. It's
Speaker 1: a little movie, and we're the main character, so of
Speaker 1: course we're the most important person in that story. Right.
Speaker 1: You're trying to link together a series of what are
Speaker 1: in fact sort of random events into a cohesive narrative
Speaker 1: with a logic to it, right, And then through theory
Speaker 1: of mind, we're constantly running simulations about the mental states
Speaker 1: of other people, specific people, people in general, known people,
Speaker 1: unknown people, sort of hypothetical people. Uh. And and of
Speaker 1: course one of the key aspects of any of these
Speaker 1: simulations is, you know, how do they relate to me,
Speaker 1: how do they think about me? What are their intentions
Speaker 1: towards me? And that makes sense, right, There's an inherently
Speaker 1: self centered quality to this sort of thinking because it
Speaker 1: all comes down to individual survival. We tend to air
Speaker 1: on the side of seeing tigers in the grass when
Speaker 1: there are none, which is better of the two possible
Speaker 1: gambles here, But it also means going through life perpetually
Speaker 1: imagining how the tiger sees you. Yeah, and so this
Speaker 1: is in some ways the exact social equivalent of the
Speaker 1: agency detection overdrive, where you, you know, over interpret a
Speaker 1: crack of a twig as a tiger in the grass. Here,
Speaker 1: you over interpret any little thing that that you think
Speaker 1: maybe going wrong in a social interaction as something that
Speaker 1: people will notice and remember and judge you for. So
Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and then when
Speaker 1: we come back, we can get a little bit further
Speaker 1: into this study. Thank you, thank you, thank Alright, we're back. Okay.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the study from the year two
Speaker 1: thousand by Gilovich and co authors who are putting forth
Speaker 1: this this putative phenomenon that at the time they called
Speaker 1: the spotlight effects, the idea that we overestimate the salience
Speaker 1: of our appearance and our behavior to other people. And
Speaker 1: the authors here note several lines of previous research that
Speaker 1: helped point to this conclusion. One of them is, first
Speaker 1: of all, this may not be surprising at all, but
Speaker 1: people do tend to have egocentric biases that you can
Speaker 1: measure quite easily and in in tests. These are biases
Speaker 1: that overstate the importance of the self. Just one example
Speaker 1: the site is a paper by Ross and Sickly published
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine called ego centric Biases and Availability
Speaker 1: and Attribution, and it showed it showed this in the
Speaker 1: realm of what's called responsibility allocation, Who did, how much
Speaker 1: and how important was what they did? So there are
Speaker 1: several different ways you can test for this. Uh, maybe
Speaker 1: in discussion groups, maybe in household chores, maybe in basketball teams. Uh,
Speaker 1: quote one zone, contributions to a joint product are more
Speaker 1: readily available. That is, more frequently and easily recalled. Individuals
Speaker 1: accepted more responsibility for a group product than other participants
Speaker 1: attributed to them. So the easy way of thinking about
Speaker 1: this is, oh, our team one, because I scored that goal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of this particularly telling. The authors point out
Speaker 1: that the research indicates that when individuals undertake complex social interactions,
Speaker 1: they alternate between the roles of speaker or actor and
Speaker 1: listener or observer, but much of their attention is ultimately
Speaker 1: going to be directed in many cases at planning and
Speaker 1: executing their own responses. And I think we can relate
Speaker 1: to this. Uh, you know when when those times when
Speaker 1: you haven't quite zoned out on a meeting, like you're
Speaker 1: not just or or a conversation. You're not just you know,
Speaker 1: out here thinking about Star Wars in the back of
Speaker 1: your head. No, you're focusing instead on the thing that
Speaker 1: you're getting ready to say, your interjection into the conversation,
Speaker 1: the joke that you are intending to make when you
Speaker 1: get the talking stick. Um. And uh, you know, because
Speaker 1: ultimately that's often a part of any kind of like
Speaker 1: three way or or or larger conversation is when when
Speaker 1: is it going to be my turn? And how am
Speaker 1: I going to make the most out of my my
Speaker 1: time speaking. I believe there's actually a name for this
Speaker 1: exact effect. It's a different thing spend stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it's very related to the stuff we're talking about,
Speaker 1: but I think it's called the next in line effect,
Speaker 1: where you can measure that people have less recall of
Speaker 1: if you if you like, sit people in a circle
Speaker 1: and go around the circle asking them to speak, people
Speaker 1: have less recall of the person who spoke right before
Speaker 1: them than they do everybody else, because you know, when
Speaker 1: the person right before you was talking, you're planning what
Speaker 1: you're gonna say. Yeah, And it means that when one
Speaker 1: thinks back on a meeting, so you're in this meeting,
Speaker 1: you have this period of time where you're you're applying
Speaker 1: most of your cognitive efforts towards preparing for your own words,
Speaker 1: and then when you think back on it, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to remember the thing that you were focused on
Speaker 1: at the time. You know, your own words, your own
Speaker 1: contribution um, because that's where that's where you're spending the
Speaker 1: mental resources. The exception to this however, would be if
Speaker 1: one's could contribution required a little effort, like instead of
Speaker 1: plotting to interject something that will make everyone laugh or
Speaker 1: pursuing some specific strategic aim in the meeting, what if
Speaker 1: it was just the part of the meeting where every
Speaker 1: week your boss says, hey, Roy, what are the numbers?
Speaker 1: Just read us the numbers real quick, and then you
Speaker 1: read the numbers something that's you know, quick and normal
Speaker 1: like that. Now, the exception of this they mentioned would
Speaker 1: be passive observers, people who are in the meeting but
Speaker 1: are not planning to have the talking stick at any point,
Speaker 1: don't have any kind of active role in the meeting,
Speaker 1: or if they do, maybe it is just reading off
Speaker 1: the stats and they don't have a larger role to play,
Speaker 1: so they might well focus more on other people in
Speaker 1: the meeting. They are, they are going to be the
Speaker 1: ones that are going to be more likely to notice
Speaker 1: what you say or do that. That totally makes sense
Speaker 1: to me, Um, I think I have much better recall
Speaker 1: of meetings where I am not expected to speak. That
Speaker 1: being said, and this is this is me, not the
Speaker 1: authors here, But I suspect that the passive observers are
Speaker 1: also far more likely to be thinking about Star Wars
Speaker 1: or what they're they need to buy at the grocery
Speaker 1: score later that so supernatural biker movies. Yeah, or here's
Speaker 1: a big one and we didn't even get into this,
Speaker 1: but via the zoom call, uh one has a tremendous
Speaker 1: ability to just simply go to other websites during the
Speaker 1: call and still look basically attentive, right, because you'd just
Speaker 1: be looking at the screen either way. Yeah, there's your excuse, folks,
Speaker 1: digital hookie, because anybody tried just putting up like a
Speaker 1: face like I know, you can insertain backgrounds on these
Speaker 1: video calls, putting up a background that has a photo
Speaker 1: of them in it so it looks like they're sitting there.
Speaker 1: I bet somebody has somebody out there has gotten a
Speaker 1: little bit forward and figured out a way to make
Speaker 1: it happen. It would be It would be kind of
Speaker 1: the equivalent of but didn't Helmer Simpson have some glasses
Speaker 1: at one point that made him look like he was awake? Yes,
Speaker 1: it's when he's in he's on a jury and he's
Speaker 1: expected to be paying attention, but he is sleeping. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's right, I remember that wide awake glasses and one
Speaker 1: of the other jurors and arcs on him. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so so anyway, the effect here, I think pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: If an action stands out in your own mind for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, you're going to end up thinking it was
Speaker 1: more important in some objective sense than it actually was.
Speaker 1: And so, in other words, if people overestimate the relevance
Speaker 1: of their own actions in an objective sense, wouldn't they
Speaker 1: also overestimate how relevant their actions are subjectively to other people? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: The authors also point out in many cases it might
Speaker 1: not matter it maybe quote overlook when joint endeavors do
Speaker 1: not require explicit allocations of responsibility. But obviously sometimes this
Speaker 1: is not the case. Yeah. It particularly makes me think
Speaker 1: of a frequent folk you see in films, the villainous meetings,
Speaker 1: when you have villains around a table generally having a meeting,
Speaker 1: having this sort of you know, dark, more antagonistic version
Speaker 1: of our regular real life business meetings. Um, the meetings
Speaker 1: of Specter in the early James Bond Yeah, who are
Speaker 1: Blowfeld would have the have the command consoled like electrocute
Speaker 1: somebody's chair, yeah, or another favorite of mine, or the
Speaker 1: meetings you see the Imperial meetings in like Star Wars
Speaker 1: and New Hope, or we're also in Rogue one where
Speaker 1: we have the likes of Darth Vader and grand Moth
Speaker 1: Tarken or or Orson Critic. You know, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: all objectively, they're they're all talking about, okay, we need
Speaker 1: to get the Death Star up and running. But these
Speaker 1: are all highly egotistical and self focused individuals, and they
Speaker 1: all seen each pretty focused on their own key role
Speaker 1: in everything, and they're certainly not about like elevating the
Speaker 1: project itself above personal ambition. Yeah. Yeah, they're clearly like
Speaker 1: trying to stick up for their own branch. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, dangerous to your star fleet commander, not to
Speaker 1: my battle station. Yeah, okay. A few more previously observed.
Speaker 1: A psychological phenomenon that the authors call attention to is
Speaker 1: is potentially backing up the idea of a spotlight effect.
Speaker 1: Another one is what's known as naive realism. The right
Speaker 1: quote naive realism or for is to the common tendency
Speaker 1: to assume that one's perception of an object or event
Speaker 1: is an accurate reflection of its objective properties, not a
Speaker 1: subjective interpretation or construle. In other words, Look, it happened
Speaker 1: just like I saw it. It's the tendency to believe
Speaker 1: that your perception is unbiased and accurate, even though you
Speaker 1: might readily attribute, you know, mistakes and biases to other
Speaker 1: people's perceptions. Yeah, and this is all tied up in
Speaker 1: the philosophy of perception. Um. So when we're talking about
Speaker 1: naive realism also known as direct realism, that stands in
Speaker 1: opposition do indirect or representational realism. So direct or niaive
Speaker 1: realism holds that we perceive things in the world directly
Speaker 1: and without the then the mediation of any impression, idea,
Speaker 1: or representation. And I think we can generally agree, especially
Speaker 1: on this show, that this is not the true nature
Speaker 1: of how a human process is reality. No, the things
Speaker 1: you see are based on the external world, but it's
Speaker 1: not an unbiased direct representation of the external world. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's there's a weight to things, you know. It's like
Speaker 1: if you know, if yesterday somebody slapped me with the fish,
Speaker 1: today I see a fish and like that that the
Speaker 1: nature of my perception is going to be augmented by
Speaker 1: that previous experience. Right now. Indirect realism adheres to the
Speaker 1: idea that material objects do have mind independent existence, but
Speaker 1: but not that our visual perception is unmediated, or that
Speaker 1: these objects necessarily possess all of the features that we
Speaker 1: perceived them to have. Like a quick example of that
Speaker 1: would be, obviously, we look at our beloved pets, and
Speaker 1: we may, you know, we may perceive them to have
Speaker 1: various nuances that they simply do not have. And you know,
Speaker 1: as pet owners, were generally okay with that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's exactly right. And I think indirect realism, I
Speaker 1: don't know, to me, that is the model of the
Speaker 1: world that makes the most sense. Like I would not
Speaker 1: say I'm an idealist. I believe the external world doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: I don't go for at But obviously our our ideas
Speaker 1: about what is motivating our dog or something might be
Speaker 1: more us than actually coming from the dog. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, there's also phenomenalism, which generally rejects the mind
Speaker 1: independent existence of material logics but accepts on mediated visual
Speaker 1: perception and the possession of of perceived features. So other
Speaker 1: things are not things as much as they are bundles
Speaker 1: of sense data, which is a weird way to to
Speaker 1: behold your pat after Yeah, that's getting almost into kind
Speaker 1: of George Berkeley and kind of territory that that I
Speaker 1: don't think I can fully go for, but that it
Speaker 1: ultimately doesn't really play into what we're talking about here. Again,
Speaker 1: we're talking about direct realism or our naive realism versus
Speaker 1: indirect or representational realism, right, And I think we do
Speaker 1: have a tendency to really underappreciate how much our perceptions
Speaker 1: are affected by the kinds of mistakes and distortions that
Speaker 1: we readily attribute to other people. And so the authors
Speaker 1: of the two thousand paper right that quote applied to
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect. This implies that it might be easy
Speaker 1: to confuse how salient something is to oneself with how
Speaker 1: salient it is to others, precisely because our own behavior
Speaker 1: stands out in our own minds, it can be hard
Speaker 1: to discern how well or even whether it is picked
Speaker 1: up by others. Absolutely, we may be attending the same
Speaker 1: meeting or Zoom conference call, but we are not all
Speaker 1: attending the same meeting or Zoom conference call, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. We we all have different perceptions of
Speaker 1: it based on our own biases, our own histories, our
Speaker 1: own pervasive thoughts are right, you know. Cognitive model of
Speaker 1: the task at hand and our role in it. I mean,
Speaker 1: our our subjective understanding of the meeting is going to
Speaker 1: different person to person exactly. So leading into the next
Speaker 1: thing here that the authors point out as possibly pointing
Speaker 1: to a spotlight effect. This is something that has been
Speaker 1: documented known as the self as target bias. Quick example,
Speaker 1: so you're in a classroom the teacher gives a pop
Speaker 1: quiz about last night's reading. Johnny interprets this quiz as
Speaker 1: an attack on him personally because he believes that the
Speaker 1: teacher must believe that he didn't do the reading. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think even the best of us sometimes
Speaker 1: we fall prey to thinking like this something that is
Speaker 1: a a general sort of action applied to everyone. We think,
Speaker 1: why are they doing this to me? Yeah? Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: if you have a light up, like a build up,
Speaker 1: build up of anticipation about a given you know, meeting
Speaker 1: or or social scenario. Yeah, And so the author's right
Speaker 1: quote like naive realism, then the self is target bias
Speaker 1: reflects a confusion between what is available to oneself and
Speaker 1: what is likely to be available to and hence guide
Speaker 1: the actions of others. So again, Johnny might think, well,
Speaker 1: the teacher knows I didn't do the reading, and that's
Speaker 1: why she's giving the test today, or she's giving the
Speaker 1: pop quiz today. But the teacher doesn't know that. It's
Speaker 1: just you know, that's what he knows. And then finally,
Speaker 1: the authors point out that these previously document at ecocentric
Speaker 1: biases are very similar to the kind of egocentrism that
Speaker 1: Jean Piege observed pervading the cognition of young children early
Speaker 1: in their development. One of the more important parts of
Speaker 1: growing up, in fact, is shedding some of that ecocentrism.
Speaker 1: But it turns out we don't shed it all. It
Speaker 1: still appears in adults, simply in diminished form. It's certainly
Speaker 1: more diminished in some people than it is in us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so it's young children. I mean, people with
Speaker 1: with kids will probably recognize this. Often seem not to
Speaker 1: grasp that other people have a different perspective than they do.
Speaker 1: This happens when you're very young, and gradually, as you
Speaker 1: get older, you get more, you get more consistent about
Speaker 1: being able to accurately sort of model the minds of others.
Speaker 1: Understand that they have different desires, different perspectives than you do.
Speaker 1: And adults of course by the time of adulthood usually
Speaker 1: recognize this gap rationally, but still might have a hard
Speaker 1: time sort of calibrating to predict it accurate. Really, now,
Speaker 1: the authors of this paper here say that what is
Speaker 1: the method that that we use to calibrate this this prediction.
Speaker 1: They say that it's probably based on anchoring and adjustment. Now,
Speaker 1: I was reading some follow up work by Gilovich about
Speaker 1: the the anchoring and adjustment controversy. Very brief refresher on anchoring.
Speaker 1: We've done an episode about this in the past. So,
Speaker 1: like when you're trying to come up with an answer
Speaker 1: to a question like how much is this car worth?
Speaker 1: Or what do people think of the speech I just made?
Speaker 1: You don't necessarily reason toward an answer from a neutral
Speaker 1: starting point. We often tend to be influenced by sort
Speaker 1: of like data points or hypothetical answers that we can
Speaker 1: kind of hang a hat on to begin with. Which
Speaker 1: might be one reason that you've got a good, you know,
Speaker 1: price written on the on the windshield of a car,
Speaker 1: even if that's not the price you would actually end
Speaker 1: up paying. Now, this was the Now, the anchoring and
Speaker 1: adjustment model was what the authors were working with at
Speaker 1: the time. That's the idea we often think by starting
Speaker 1: with an anchor, and then we just adjust our estimate
Speaker 1: up or down from the anchor. I was reading some
Speaker 1: follow up work by Gilovich about the adjustment controversy, like,
Speaker 1: is this really the way we think? Is this really
Speaker 1: how we get to our anchor biased answers? Is it
Speaker 1: based on this adjustment process? Apparently that idea has come
Speaker 1: under some criticism in the past few decades, and there
Speaker 1: are arguments about how to best understand what's happening in
Speaker 1: people's heads when they fall for the anchoring bias. We're
Speaker 1: not going to get into the weeds of that argument here.
Speaker 1: You can check out our full episode on the anchoring
Speaker 1: bias for more depth. Um, but whatever the role of
Speaker 1: an adjustment mechanism in the brain, the anchoring effect does
Speaker 1: actually appear in many scenarios, and the authors in this
Speaker 1: paper are saying that the anchoring effect manifests in how
Speaker 1: we imagine the opinions of other people about us, because
Speaker 1: our our anchor, Our starting point is how we feel
Speaker 1: about ourselves, the stuff we notice about ourselves, and then
Speaker 1: we kind of reason from there to what other people's
Speaker 1: opinions would be. Well that makes sense again coming back
Speaker 1: to the idea that we're using theory of mind to
Speaker 1: ultimately create simulations about the mind states of everyone in
Speaker 1: our lives from you know, from the person we're closest with,
Speaker 1: two people that are just you know, like supervisors or
Speaker 1: complete strangers and uh and and all of that is
Speaker 1: constructed with ourselves at the middle, like our model of
Speaker 1: ourselfs um is ultimately the like the I guess you
Speaker 1: would say that the support structure on which this entire
Speaker 1: network is built, right, It's kind of like you can't
Speaker 1: build any bridges two ideas of other minds without starting
Speaker 1: from the foundation of your own. And that foundation of
Speaker 1: your own is going to come with a lot of
Speaker 1: baggage of like knowledge about yourself that other people don't have,
Speaker 1: and high levels of concern about your personal attributes that
Speaker 1: other people might not share, probably don't share. And that's
Speaker 1: everybody we should need to drive that home. Like we're
Speaker 1: not just talking about like say, like it's like stereotypically
Speaker 1: egocentric person you know, or someone who has like like
Speaker 1: very obvious uh and pronounced personality flaws or anything like that,
Speaker 1: or dealing with with various mental health concerns or anything
Speaker 1: of that nature. But ultimately this naive perception is also
Speaker 1: self perception as well. Yeah, yeah, so I guess here
Speaker 1: we get to the actual empirical part of this research,
Speaker 1: like how would you study this? How would you look
Speaker 1: for empirical evidence of a spotlight effect? And there are
Speaker 1: a number of studies that are covered in this paper.
Speaker 1: I'm going to discuss them in sequence and very broad strokes.
Speaker 1: Uh so, what, let me guess you know, what's going
Speaker 1: to be our our our key um implement in this study.
Speaker 1: Is it going to be like a god helmet that
Speaker 1: it scans my brain? Is it going to be uh,
Speaker 1: you know, some other kind of like high tech device
Speaker 1: that I'm I'm cooking my nervous system up to. You're
Speaker 1: extremely close. No, we get into the cybernetics of a
Speaker 1: very Manilow T shirt. So the question is something maybe
Speaker 1: a lot of you have wondered before. Do people usually
Speaker 1: notice it's on your T shirt? Or do they just
Speaker 1: not even care? It's a great question. I know when
Speaker 1: I wear a T shirt, I'm I I have certainly
Speaker 1: caught myself, especially at least in retrospect, thinking way too
Speaker 1: much about how others will perceive this shirt design, yeah,
Speaker 1: and what it's saying about me and my interest what
Speaker 1: is it broadcasting to the world, and that would be
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I feel like I'm always
Speaker 1: very interested in what other people's shirts say, to the
Speaker 1: point that I sometimes feel self conscious about trying to
Speaker 1: understand what someone shure it is because I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be looking like caught staring at somebody's
Speaker 1: T shirt. I think you probably notice certain kinds of
Speaker 1: shirts more than others, Like you might pick up on
Speaker 1: cues that like, oh, this is a band T shirt,
Speaker 1: and I'm usually kind of interested in band t shirts,
Speaker 1: so when you see what this is, But like other things,
Speaker 1: if it's a i'd imagine like a football team or something,
Speaker 1: you might not even take notice. That's true. I guess
Speaker 1: the shirts I'm usually interested in are I guess you
Speaker 1: know it's a certain extent band shirts, But if it
Speaker 1: has any kind of like monster type thing on it,
Speaker 1: then I definitely want to know what's going on. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's our brains. That's just our brains being our brains.
Speaker 1: Uh so so extremely simple set up for the study
Speaker 1: dead simple. You get a group of participants to gather
Speaker 1: in a room and you have them basically in there
Speaker 1: like filling out questionnaires for an experiment that is supposedly
Speaker 1: about memory. And then another participant joins that group late,
Speaker 1: but before they go into the room, you require them
Speaker 1: to put on a Berry man Low T shirt. Then,
Speaker 1: after they've been in the room for a very brief time,
Speaker 1: you say, actually, this group has already gotten started, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna hold you back for for another session. And
Speaker 1: then you have the Barry Manilow interloper leave the room,
Speaker 1: and then you ask everybody. Okay, you ask the interloper,
Speaker 1: the Berry man Low T shirt wearer, how many people
Speaker 1: in the room do you think noticed that you were
Speaker 1: wearing a Berry man Low T shirt? And then you
Speaker 1: ask the people who were in the room if they
Speaker 1: noticed who was on the T shirt? Right, You're just
Speaker 1: very simple comparing the person's expectation of how many people
Speaker 1: noticed to how many people actually noticed. And true to prediction,
Speaker 1: the students who wore the T shirt tended to wildly
Speaker 1: overestimate how many people in the room would notice and
Speaker 1: be able to identify their Manilow T shirt. Generally, the
Speaker 1: Manilow interloper guests that about half of the other students
Speaker 1: on average would be able to identify their T shirt,
Speaker 1: and in reality only about twenty five percent of the
Speaker 1: observers could do it. So in their minds, the people
Speaker 1: wearing this potentially conspicuous piece of clothing mentally doubled the
Speaker 1: percentage of people who they thought would notice it. Real quick, Joe,
Speaker 1: when you have the study you were looking at here,
Speaker 1: did you get to see this Manlo T shirt? No?
Speaker 1: I didn't. That's my big question because I'm currently looking
Speaker 1: at various very Manilow T shirts in um manage search here,
Speaker 1: and they do. They do run the gamut here. We
Speaker 1: have some we have some very forgettable Manilow shirts, but
Speaker 1: we have some some real singers here. Uh yeah, well
Speaker 1: I think so. I could be wrong, but I think
Speaker 1: what it was was it was just like a picture
Speaker 1: of his face. Okay, well even then, like it's a
Speaker 1: it's a noticeable face. I mean you know that. That
Speaker 1: was That's part of the whole business proposal here. But
Speaker 1: there were also control groups for this study. They in
Speaker 1: the control groups, this was an interesting calibration. The control
Speaker 1: groups were not in the room, but instead they watched
Speaker 1: the entire scene play out on a video recording, and
Speaker 1: then they were asked to estimate the number of observers
Speaker 1: who would notice the T shirt, and the control groups
Speaker 1: guessed much closer to the real number of people who
Speaker 1: would actually notice it, and they did not overestimate to
Speaker 1: the extent that the person wearing the shirt did. And
Speaker 1: this was taken as evidence that quote the targets inflated
Speaker 1: estimates are not simply the result of misguided general theories
Speaker 1: about observers powers of servation. In other words, the relevant
Speaker 1: variable is I am the person wearing it. But that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Again, we are the we are the central
Speaker 1: character in our own narrative. Okay, second study in this paper,
Speaker 1: so uh, It's worth noting that the majority of the
Speaker 1: students that they interviewed in the first study reported, in
Speaker 1: fact that wearing a very Manilow T shirt was considered embarrassing,
Speaker 1: that Barry Manilow was considered kind of corny and uncool.
Speaker 1: And it does make me wonder has Barry Manilow come
Speaker 1: full circle yet? Has he become cool again? I don't know,
Speaker 1: some of those shirts I was just looking at look
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah. I think that was part of the
Speaker 1: design of the first study, was that this is a
Speaker 1: figure that not everybody but a lot of people wearing
Speaker 1: the shirt. Would you know, it's not just like any face,
Speaker 1: it's somebody who a lot of students would probably feel
Speaker 1: kind of embarrassed to be wearing a shirt of. But
Speaker 1: the question is, like, does this phenomena hold for T
Speaker 1: shirts that would not be embarrassing? That would just be
Speaker 1: a picture of anybody, maybe anybody that the student liked.
Speaker 1: So the second study tested for the spotlight effect with
Speaker 1: reference to non embarrassing personal details. It replicated the design
Speaker 1: of the first study, but it allowed students to choose
Speaker 1: a T shirt featuring a person that they liked and
Speaker 1: viewed as not embarrassing. So it might be a T
Speaker 1: shirt of like Bob Marley or Jerry Seinfeld or something.
Speaker 1: Way it was Jerry Seinfeld. Really was that this was
Speaker 1: he specifically mentioned? And yeah, yeah that was one of them.
Speaker 1: How is that Jerry Seinfeld shirt not embarrassed? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Some people didn't think it was, you know, times changed,
Speaker 1: this was what you're thousands something like that. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Bob Marley shirt I think remains that remains cool. But
Speaker 1: I just have questions about the Gary Science Felt shirt.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is again just tells more, says some more
Speaker 1: about my interests versus other people's interests. But maybe I
Speaker 1: am uncool for not wearing one. No, no, no, you're
Speaker 1: very cool, Rubbert. But again there was a huge mismatch
Speaker 1: right between. Even when you're wearing a shirt that's not
Speaker 1: conspicuously embarrassing to a number of students, people just predicted
Speaker 1: that observers would notice who was on their shirt a
Speaker 1: lot more than the observers actually did. It just makes
Speaker 1: me think of of myself or anyone you know. You've
Speaker 1: got that new shirt and you're like, is today today?
Speaker 1: Is today the day that I wear this, uh, this
Speaker 1: new shirt going unleashed, this bad boy on an unsuspecting world.
Speaker 1: Is the world ready? And yes? The thing is, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're ready, and yeah they'll they'll be fine. Also like,
Speaker 1: don't really to worry about um Yeah, so so okay,
Speaker 1: But that's appearance. That's just clothing items. What about for behavior?
Speaker 1: Can we look for examples of this in behavior? So
Speaker 1: the third study tested for whether the spotlight effect exists
Speaker 1: not just for clothing, but for specifically stuff people say
Speaker 1: in a group setting. Quote. In particular, we sought to
Speaker 1: investigate whether people tend to believe that their positive and
Speaker 1: negative actions stand out to others more than they actually do.
Speaker 1: And this was tested with stage discussion groups, So they
Speaker 1: would have a discussion group meeting, and then they would
Speaker 1: ask people afterwards to rate other participants on both positive
Speaker 1: and negative dimensions of their contributions. So you'd rate all
Speaker 1: the people you just had a group with, and you'd
Speaker 1: say how much did participant X due to advance the discussion.
Speaker 1: That'd be a positive mark, and then negative things would
Speaker 1: be like how many speech errors did participant X make
Speaker 1: or how likely was participant X to offend someone? And
Speaker 1: participants also rated, of course, what they thought others would
Speaker 1: think of them, you know, then they turned it on
Speaker 1: themselves and they found the same thing. The study indicated
Speaker 1: that we tend to overestimate the salience of our behavior
Speaker 1: to others in both positive and negative ways. So it's
Speaker 1: not just like a self serving bias or self critical bias.
Speaker 1: It's just we tend to assume people are paying way
Speaker 1: more attention and noticing way more about the stuff we do,
Speaker 1: both good and bad, which makes me think of like
Speaker 1: the hell razor tagline, it's like angels to some devils.
Speaker 1: To others. But really, maybe you think am I an
Speaker 1: angel or a devil? And in fact you're just kind
Speaker 1: of a gray blur that someone does not recall in
Speaker 1: any way. An Now, an important thing that's worth pointing
Speaker 1: out here is that people's self ratings on this discussion
Speaker 1: group thing, we're not entirely divorced from reality. To the contrary,
Speaker 1: the study found that these ratings were in some ways
Speaker 1: based in reality. People who rated themselves as doing more
Speaker 1: to advance the discussion we're also on average rated by
Speaker 1: others as doing more to advance the discussion. And people
Speaker 1: who rated themselves as more likely to have said something
Speaker 1: that offended someone were in fact more likely to have
Speaker 1: said something that offended someone. But it's the size of
Speaker 1: these effects, both positive and negative, that was exaggerated when
Speaker 1: people were thinking about themselves so in self evaluation and
Speaker 1: insightful comment that might have actually been an insightful comment
Speaker 1: to you it feels like, wow, that was earth shaking,
Speaker 1: I really changed the game, or a faux paw that
Speaker 1: other people might notice, but you know, doesn't really stand
Speaker 1: out to them all that much. It might become reputation
Speaker 1: ruining this terror, this obsession. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, and
Speaker 1: again I wonder I can't help think about social media
Speaker 1: when you have systems that are set up so that
Speaker 1: comments that are insightful may see more earth shaking because
Speaker 1: they are being you know, re shared or retweeted or
Speaker 1: or lighthearted, etcetera. And then and then likewise, there is
Speaker 1: the negative reaction to the things as well. And of
Speaker 1: course those tend to be the extremes that we we
Speaker 1: we hear about in a in a digital setting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but even then, I think the reality is that, like
Speaker 1: most people are not paying attention to you and won't
Speaker 1: remember anything you did, right, right, it's just humbling in
Speaker 1: a kind of nice way. Yeah. Okay, a couple more studies,
Speaker 1: real quick. One of them in the fourth one, this
Speaker 1: recreated the early T shirt scenario, but then ask participants
Speaker 1: questions to probe how they came up with their estimates.
Speaker 1: This is how the authors were trying to test whether
Speaker 1: or not it was an anchoring and adjustment mental process
Speaker 1: that people were using to to get to their mistaken
Speaker 1: assumptions about other people's views of them and uh so
Speaker 1: their model. Again, this could be it could turn out
Speaker 1: that this is not the best way to model the
Speaker 1: thinking going on here. But what they thought at the
Speaker 1: time was that people start with their own rich and
Speaker 1: powerful sense of how they appear to others. They realize
Speaker 1: correctly that other people are not paying as much attention
Speaker 1: to them as they pay to themselves. So they may
Speaker 1: be adjust down from their own experience to a hypothetical
Speaker 1: other observer, but they don't adjust enough. So you know,
Speaker 1: how important was what I just did? Uh? Well, to me,
Speaker 1: it was a ten, But I know other people probably
Speaker 1: aren't going to rate it at ten, so I'll say
Speaker 1: it's a nine to them, but in reality was maybe
Speaker 1: like a six, yeah, or a four. And then the
Speaker 1: last of the last of the studies, the fifth one.
Speaker 1: This one, I think established something that's very important that
Speaker 1: we can come back to in a minute. This tested habituation.
Speaker 1: If people are allowed a period to get used to
Speaker 1: wearing the unfamiliar very Manilow T shirt, will they feel
Speaker 1: less self conscious about others noticing it? And the answer
Speaker 1: is yes. If you wear the T shirt for a
Speaker 1: while before going in front of other people, you will
Speaker 1: tend to imagine that fewer of them took notice of it.
Speaker 1: Then if you just put it on and then go in.
Speaker 1: But of course, in these scenarios, absolutely nothing has changed
Speaker 1: for the observers. The only thing that has changed is you.
Speaker 1: The more that you're more used to the shirt yourself,
Speaker 1: you're less conscious of it, so you imagine less consciousness
Speaker 1: among others. So in this like if if I don't
Speaker 1: know if anyone has ever had this experience being you know,
Speaker 1: somebody who wears a well worn but offensive T shirt
Speaker 1: an inappropriate setting, um, like, you know, they're used to it.
Speaker 1: They're used to the potentially profane statement that is on it.
Speaker 1: Everyone else and man, it might not be ready for Yes,
Speaker 1: I think this is actually a various tute observation and
Speaker 1: it will come back to something I want to get
Speaker 1: at right at the end here, should we take another
Speaker 1: break and then when we come back we can discuss
Speaker 1: some of the implications of this research. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Thank you. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: We're continuing our discussion here of of the spotlight effect
Speaker 1: and uh and of course the various key shirt experiments
Speaker 1: things that relate to that explanation. Yeah, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about some commentary on and and implications from
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect to whatever extent this is a real effect.
Speaker 1: It does appear like it still stands. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would be interested to see some more recent research replicating this,
Speaker 1: but but it looks pretty solid to me. One of
Speaker 1: the things that the lead author of the study we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, Gilovich, Uh, he's noted in another source
Speaker 1: he actually had an article about the spotlight effect for
Speaker 1: the Encyclopedia of Social Psychology edited by Baumeister and Vos,
Speaker 1: And in that article, Gilovich notes that research indicates the
Speaker 1: quote people of all ages are prone to the spotlight effect,
Speaker 1: but it appears to be particularly pronounced among adolescents and
Speaker 1: young adults. So as you get older, the spotlight effect
Speaker 1: seems to work less powerfully on your brain. What would
Speaker 1: explain this, Well, one answer might be experienced right in
Speaker 1: Over time, you just learn through experience that people pay
Speaker 1: less attention to you and notice less about you than
Speaker 1: you expect them to. And it's possible this does play
Speaker 1: some role. Maybe you get conditioned, you kind of learn
Speaker 1: how things work in life, and you experience less of
Speaker 1: this cognitive bias. But Gilovich identifies a different reason, and
Speaker 1: that reason is that social motivation is stronger when you're younger.
Speaker 1: Younger people show a heightened consciousness of and concerned for
Speaker 1: their standing within social groups. Quote. But having a heightened
Speaker 1: concern with one's social standing means, by its very nature
Speaker 1: that one is vulnerable to having an excessive concern with
Speaker 1: one standing and hints is likely to overestimate the extent
Speaker 1: to which one is the target of others thoughts and attention.
Speaker 1: So I'd say to take away from this maybe a
Speaker 1: special message to like younger and like teenage listeners, like
Speaker 1: other people really probably are noticing less about you and
Speaker 1: thinking less about you than you think they are. As shocking,
Speaker 1: is that maybe to hear. Another thing that that's related
Speaker 1: to this idea that the authors mentioned in their in
Speaker 1: their discussion section on their paper is the way that
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect relates to something that's known as the
Speaker 1: illusion of transparency. So the illusion of transparency is the
Speaker 1: belief that your internal states are more observable to others
Speaker 1: than they actually are. We often assume that our unspoken
Speaker 1: thoughts and our feelings can be sort of sniffed out
Speaker 1: and discerned by people around us, But that's usually not true,
Speaker 1: not not to the extent that we think it is.
Speaker 1: And there are examples of this from empirical research. For example,
Speaker 1: if you stage a mock negotiation where people are trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, negotiate to get to a certain price on something,
Speaker 1: people tend to imagine that they have given away more
Speaker 1: information about what they're trying to get than they actually have.
Speaker 1: Another variation is that studies show that a lot of
Speaker 1: times people imagine that other people can tell when they
Speaker 1: are lying, but in reality, people can't actually tell when
Speaker 1: people are lying, or at least I mean some people
Speaker 1: maybe can tell some of the time, but most of
Speaker 1: the time, other people cannot tell if you're lying, cannot
Speaker 1: spot your lies with nearly as much accuracy as you
Speaker 1: think they can do with that information what you will,
Speaker 1: I really don't. I think it's it's like, it's a
Speaker 1: great point because first of all, we all lie, like
Speaker 1: lying is is is part of our communication suite. You know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna individuals are gonna engage in it too, varying degrees,
Speaker 1: but you know, it is important to have that tool
Speaker 1: in your toolbox. You know, if someone shows you a
Speaker 1: picture of a baby, and and and and and you're
Speaker 1: expected to comment upon it, it is generally in your
Speaker 1: best interest to lie. If you think that baby is ugly, right,
Speaker 1: or or at least find some way to uh that
Speaker 1: is not just comedic adherence to truth? Right, you can
Speaker 1: you can find something nice to say that isn't necessarily untrue. Right,
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, lying can be, or
Speaker 1: at least only, feel like a high risk act, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, no one wants to be caught in a
Speaker 1: lie um, even if the stakes are ultimately kind of low.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess maybe even more so at times
Speaker 1: if the stakes are low, because why are you lying
Speaker 1: about that? Well, like, why didn't you say you didn't
Speaker 1: like this picture of my baby? Or I don't know,
Speaker 1: let me say, I can't think of specific example, but okay,
Speaker 1: here's a potential example where if someone says, hey, if
Speaker 1: you're seen Die Hard too, and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good, and and maybe the thing is you
Speaker 1: haven't seen it. You have no interest in saying maybe
Speaker 1: you think that the whole concept sounds kind of stupid,
Speaker 1: but you want to be polite about it. And you
Speaker 1: also don't want to be You don't want the plot
Speaker 1: to have to be explained to you now you know
Speaker 1: you can see it in the theater. You also don't
Speaker 1: want to hear your friend Ron surprise it for you.
Speaker 1: But then if they're like, oh, yeah, what was your
Speaker 1: favorite part? Well, crap. Now this has become a much
Speaker 1: stickier situation because I'm lying about having seen die Hard too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But people tend to assume that, like that fact that
Speaker 1: they're lying about having seen die Hard too is somehow
Speaker 1: leaking out of them in an observable way. And in
Speaker 1: some cases it might be like some people do have
Speaker 1: big tells when they're lying, but generally that information is
Speaker 1: not leaking out as much as people imagine it is.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if this is compounded to a certain
Speaker 1: extent by the lying we observe in media, lying that
Speaker 1: is either exposed via lifting relevant media like here's a
Speaker 1: here's one scene of politicians saying one thing, and here's
Speaker 1: another here's the another bit of footage that shows that
Speaker 1: they're lying or more often overt lying by a fictional character,
Speaker 1: which of course is is played up for dramatic effect
Speaker 1: and is also an artificial situation, you know, and that
Speaker 1: we know they are lying to another care Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's also like there is there's a stock type
Speaker 1: of hero in like detective fiction and all that the
Speaker 1: person who can just magically tell when other people are lying,
Speaker 1: and that that skill. No, there's a wonderful character in
Speaker 1: the recent Watchman series on HBO looking Glass, Yes, played
Speaker 1: by the great Tim Blake. Nelson has that power. The
Speaker 1: character has the power, not not Nelson himself. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we love characters like that, right. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a really fun power to try to see realized in fiction.
Speaker 1: But uh, just lies are not as easy to sniff
Speaker 1: out as I mean eat to. To really detect aalize
Speaker 1: in reality, what you have to try to do is
Speaker 1: like trap people in contradictions and stuff like ask a
Speaker 1: bunch of follow up questions. It doesn't just leak out
Speaker 1: of your face that yes I'm telling a lie and
Speaker 1: you can smell it absolutely. And you know, I also
Speaker 1: think about this in terms of religious upbringing. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but the growing up in the
Speaker 1: sort of pen octagonical teachings of a Protestant church, there
Speaker 1: was always this idea that God and and also the
Speaker 1: devil and perhaps other entities like less your angels and
Speaker 1: demons whatever you were privy to your inner thoughts, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole idea that it wasn't just what you said
Speaker 1: and did that made you sinful. It was also what
Speaker 1: you were thinking about doing, or considering doing, or just
Speaker 1: entertaining the mental images of doing. So there was this
Speaker 1: grain notion that your private thoughts are not private at all,
Speaker 1: at least not so far as supernatural entities are concerned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, And I guess it is possible that this
Speaker 1: could have a conditioning effect to make you assume that
Speaker 1: in general, your private thoughts are not private. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: observable not just two supernatural entities, but to other regular
Speaker 1: entities that you interact with every day. Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: definitely remember at times, certainly when I was younger, sort
Speaker 1: of freaking out at times about just the idea of
Speaker 1: other humans being privd in my thoughts, you know, an
Speaker 1: idea that was probably also compounded by science fiction that's
Speaker 1: just lousy with psychics, right, um, And also these not
Speaker 1: quite psychics but just really insightful TV suits. The Hannibal
Speaker 1: lecter is basically they like look at you and tell
Speaker 1: your whole life story. Yeah. But but then again, as
Speaker 1: we've discussed on the show before, this is this sort
Speaker 1: of fear is not entirely unfounded. Given the potential trajectory
Speaker 1: of some of our technology. That's true, but that's technology.
Speaker 1: I mean, normally people are not doing like AI, you know,
Speaker 1: learning on data sets about your social media use or whatever.
Speaker 1: There was one more example given about the illusion of
Speaker 1: transparency that I really liked, which was that people overestimate
Speaker 1: did the extent to which observers could tell whether the
Speaker 1: drink they were drinking was pleasant or nasty tasting, even
Speaker 1: though they were supposed to use a neutral facial expression.
Speaker 1: So you give people drinks this one, this one tastes good,
Speaker 1: this one tastes disgusting, and you tell them they have
Speaker 1: to maintain a neutrol facial expression while they drink them.
Speaker 1: People assumed, oh yeah, people can just read it on
Speaker 1: my face that you know that that was a nasty one.
Speaker 1: But it turns out people can't read all that. Well.
Speaker 1: Good to know when you have your next inner party.
Speaker 1: Um ye, hopefully it's gonna be the next thing after
Speaker 1: a competitive eating right now, So right now it's the
Speaker 1: people who wolfed down like thirty white castles or whatever.
Speaker 1: The next thing is, how many nasty drinks can you drink?
Speaker 1: I can see it becoming a big hit Okay, one
Speaker 1: last thing. So the authors of this two thousand paper
Speaker 1: ask a question, when is the spotlight effect most pronounced
Speaker 1: and when is it least pronounced? Could there be such
Speaker 1: a thing as like a verse spotlight effect, a sort
Speaker 1: of mental cloak of invisibility where other people are noticing
Speaker 1: you more than you think they are, And the authors think, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is probably possible. They claim that this would probably
Speaker 1: correlate with the subject's own consciousness of their appearance or behavior.
Speaker 1: So obviously, the more conscious you are of your own
Speaker 1: appearance and behavior, the more conscious of it you imagine
Speaker 1: other people are, and probably vice versa. If you're less
Speaker 1: conscious of yourself, you're imagining other people are less conscious
Speaker 1: of you. And so for this reason, it might be
Speaker 1: correlated somewhat to the novelty of what you're doing or wearing,
Speaker 1: or what you look like or how you sound. So
Speaker 1: remember in the fifth study in in that paper, uh,
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect was less pronounced for people who had
Speaker 1: some time to get used to wearing a potentially embarrassing,
Speaker 1: conspicuous T shirt. So it's highly possible that we are
Speaker 1: most likely to manifest the spotlight effect when we're doing
Speaker 1: something new or unusual. Well, that's interesting. It kind of
Speaker 1: ties back to what we're talking about earlier, about when
Speaker 1: you're about to say something in a meeting and you're
Speaker 1: putting a lot of cognitive effort into preparing for that
Speaker 1: and preparing to do something that you don't normally do. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: takes more effort, it takes up more space in your brain.
Speaker 1: It's more salient to you, and you assume it's more
Speaker 1: salient to other people. So it's possible. This isn't proven yet,
Speaker 1: but it's possible that the inverse effect, where we would
Speaker 1: underestimate how much other people are noticing our appearance and behavior,
Speaker 1: it's possible this happens when we are least conscious, meaning
Speaker 1: during highly familiar, routine or automatic behaviors. There's actually an
Speaker 1: example that has been studied here, uh and the example
Speaker 1: and I thought this was interesting. So people underestimate the
Speaker 1: extent to which other people notice their cologne or perfume.
Speaker 1: So you cover yourself in a fragrance, you become accustomed
Speaker 1: to that fragrance and you stop noticing it. Right Olfactory
Speaker 1: desynsitization sets in. You no longer smell it yourself, so
Speaker 1: it basically disappears for you, but other people smell it
Speaker 1: even if you don't expect them to. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we all have had that experience with with someone
Speaker 1: who has just outrageously powerful perfume, you know, like sometimes
Speaker 1: the extent that announces their presence. Yes, yes, sometimes people
Speaker 1: just lather up. And this makes me wonder about whether
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect is especially salient for appearance, because, of course,
Speaker 1: we normally can't really see ourselves when we're going about
Speaker 1: our lives. If we're in a regular business meeting talking,
Speaker 1: we can't see our face. We might be able to
Speaker 1: see our bodies if we look down at it, but
Speaker 1: we're probably not looking down. We're probably looking up at
Speaker 1: the room. But we're also frequently suddenly reminded of our
Speaker 1: appearance when we walk in front of a mirror or
Speaker 1: log into a web meeting or something. So it might
Speaker 1: be the sort of perf mix of obliviousness in your
Speaker 1: regular behaviors and then the sudden shocking reminders of oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I look like this external people, and that kind of
Speaker 1: keeps you on your toes. Like what if after putting
Speaker 1: on some cologne, you could suddenly smell it intensely again
Speaker 1: every hour or so yeah, I mean that's the mag
Speaker 1: You put it like that, it almost sounds like it
Speaker 1: would be helpful. But I don't feel like our experiences
Speaker 1: with our own footage in a zoom call or what
Speaker 1: have you is necessarily helpful. It really feels like sort
Speaker 1: of built in egocentric feedback. Yeah, because there's too much
Speaker 1: of it. It's just constantly there. So anyway, if we
Speaker 1: assume that the spotlight effect is real, it is a
Speaker 1: something that's generally true about people might not be true
Speaker 1: to the same extent for everyone. But if this effect
Speaker 1: is correctly observed, what would the implications for our lives be. Well,
Speaker 1: Gilovich has actually gotten kind of kind of sweet about this,
Speaker 1: so uh. He notes that, you know, there are studies
Speaker 1: that show that later in life, most people report that
Speaker 1: their major regrets about their lives concern things that they
Speaker 1: failed to do, rather than things that they did. It's
Speaker 1: not the same for everybody, but that is a much
Speaker 1: more common framing, and you've probably read about this before.
Speaker 1: This is widely observed. So many of the things that
Speaker 1: people want to do but never do, they hold back
Speaker 1: from them out of a sense of self consciousness or
Speaker 1: anxiety about how people are going to perceive us, you know,
Speaker 1: for doing these things. So one easy example might be
Speaker 1: that you failed to ever take up playing a musical
Speaker 1: instrument because you fear that other people will judge you
Speaker 1: as unskilled at playing it, especially at first. And so
Speaker 1: the research on the spotlight effects suggests that we are
Speaker 1: were very likely to be overestimating, perhaps even grossly overestimating,
Speaker 1: how much people would even notice whatever it is that
Speaker 1: we're afraid of doing. And the authors of the study
Speaker 1: right quote. The lesson of this research then is that
Speaker 1: we might all have fewer regrets if we properly understood
Speaker 1: how much attention or inattention our actions actually draw from others. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is it is kind of a sweet twist on it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like saying, look, go go for it,
Speaker 1: go through you live your dream, because nobody's really going
Speaker 1: to pay that much attention even when it falls flat
Speaker 1: dance like nobody's watching, because probably nobody is watching, or
Speaker 1: if they are watching, they might not even remember. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just like you're you're probably way over concerned about
Speaker 1: possible minor faux pause or looking weird or awkward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they're probably even if they're they're watching you, and
Speaker 1: they're thinking about it. They're probably thinking, oh, man, do
Speaker 1: I look like that when I danced by myself? What
Speaker 1: do I look like when I danced by myself? This? Uh,
Speaker 1: this reminds me. That's talking about situations where you realize
Speaker 1: that it may be perceived as as weird by other people,
Speaker 1: were embarrassing by other people. So so I've mentioned Star
Speaker 1: Wars like three times so far. I'm mostly tracking the
Speaker 1: house here, and me and my son are super in
Speaker 1: Star Wars. He has a couple of lightsabers and he'll
Speaker 1: he'll often ask me to go out to to have
Speaker 1: a lightsaber battle with him, which is something we have
Speaker 1: to do outside because otherwise we would destroy things in
Speaker 1: the house. And we have to do it in the
Speaker 1: front yard because the mosquitoes are too bad in the backyard. Um,
Speaker 1: so we'll have this fight in the front yard. People
Speaker 1: driving by we'll be able to see it, which generally
Speaker 1: I imagine they'll say, oh, well, there's a dad having
Speaker 1: a lightsaber battle with with his son. That's great, the
Speaker 1: sweetest thing they'll see all day. But occasionally, my son,
Speaker 1: who's much he gets so into this. Occasionally he'll have
Speaker 1: to run over to the side of the house to
Speaker 1: like fight a pretend droid or something, which leaves me
Speaker 1: in the front yard apparently by myself fighting pretend droids.
Speaker 1: And I realized when that happens, people may drive by
Speaker 1: and think that I have lost my mind, um, which
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm I'm okay, I'm ultimately okay. I
Speaker 1: think you got anything to worry about. Man. That's that
Speaker 1: that that's going to be the ray of sunshine in
Speaker 1: the in the day of so many people driving by. Seriously,
Speaker 1: if I was driving by and I saw uh, and
Speaker 1: I saw some people having a lightsaber duel in their
Speaker 1: front yard, I would be like, that's you know, there's hope,
Speaker 1: a new hope. Maybe maybe that's what I'm doing. I'm
Speaker 1: giving people hope that they're like, I didn't realize I
Speaker 1: could do that as a grown up, that I could
Speaker 1: just uh get a lightsaber and uh and start having
Speaker 1: pretend battles in my front yard. I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 1: That's gonna make this quarantine situation a lot easier. Along
Speaker 1: the same lines, I am extremely in favor of adults
Speaker 1: climbing trees. There's this bizarre idea that adults shouldn't climb trees.
Speaker 1: Climbing trees is for children. Why adults should climb trees
Speaker 1: all the time? I love a good climbing tree. It's
Speaker 1: a good skill to have. I see people in movies
Speaker 1: having to do it all the time to escape, like
Speaker 1: you know, robot and monsters and whatnot. Yeah, so go
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, those like those Boston Dynamics dog robots
Speaker 1: are coming for you. Where are you gonna go? You
Speaker 1: gotta get up the oak, like suddenly you got to
Speaker 1: climate tree and you haven't been practicing for twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty years. Good luck? And then what if you have
Speaker 1: to fight it with a lifesaver? Also, you've got to
Speaker 1: keep these skills war you know, these are the skills
Speaker 1: one needs to survive in the waste land. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close it out there. I
Speaker 1: think we have. There's a lot of material in here
Speaker 1: for everyone to think about, and we of course await
Speaker 1: listener responses to this. How how do you perceive the
Speaker 1: spotlight effect in your own life or in the lives
Speaker 1: of others? Has this forced you to to rethink anything
Speaker 1: going on in the world around you, or how you
Speaker 1: indeed engage in your daily or weekly conference digital conference
Speaker 1: calls for them. In the meantime, if you'd like to
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: including that when we mentioned anchor in the mind dealing
Speaker 1: with anchoring, you can find those wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: I will say this, you can certainly find our our
Speaker 1: I heart radio listing by going to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. And if you go there, you'll
Speaker 1: see a little part of the page and says show links.
Speaker 1: There is a store link there, and if you go
Speaker 1: there you will find T shirts that are bringing it around.
Speaker 1: And some of them are cool. Uh, some of them
Speaker 1: I would personally be embarrassed to wear. You'll have to
Speaker 1: look at them and trying to decide which which design
Speaker 1: is which. But we charge every listener to buy one
Speaker 1: cool T shirt and one extremely embarrassing T shirt. Yes,
Speaker 1: well we have both there, so go check them out
Speaker 1: if you so desire. Um. I don't know. None of
Speaker 1: them have very manilol on the front though, so you
Speaker 1: need to do a separate image search to see what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. There. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producers Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hi. You can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com s.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the
Speaker 1: i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: me to your favorite shows.