WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Spotlight Effect 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:08.400 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.440 --> 0:00:11.800 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:13.760 Time to go into the vault for an older episode 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.759 of the show. This one originally published on August four, 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:21.880 and it is about a psychological phenomenon called the spotlight effect. 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:25.160 I think this one, this one may have come out 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:27.880 of us thinking about being on zoom calls all the 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:30.880 time last summer, which at least of the time we're 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:35.080 recording this intro is still an ongoing, uh journey. But 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:38.280 but yeah, that was definitely on our minds back then, 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:40.080 and and this episode came out of it. But I 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:43.080 ended up thinking this was a really interesting subject. Yeah, 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:46.640 it definitely goes beyond the zoom realm. So if you 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:48.320 were by the time you listen to this, if you 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:50.600 were outside of the zoom realm. If if this seems 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:53.840 like an artifact of the past, uh, you know, don't worry. 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:56.720 The spotlight effect is very much in play in the 0:00:56.760 --> 0:01:04.760 world that you're living in. Hello. Everyone, This is Seth, 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:07.160 the audio producer for Stuff to Blow Your Mind. And 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.560 there's just a quick note before we start. Myself, Robert 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:13.680 and Joe, we are still recording in isolation because it 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:18.040 is the summer of and well, this episode, we had 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:20.640 a bit of a problem with Robert's microphone. It was 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:23.160 a one time thing. It shouldn't happen again in the future. 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.839 But for this episode, it's gonna sound a little bit 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:30.480 like Joe is kind of talking to a tv VCR 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:34.160 combo and like a bunker somewhere. But well, I guess 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:38.600 that's technically kind of what we're actually doing. But anyway, anyway, 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:42.240 point is this is a one time incident. Uh, it's 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.720 all still very understandable, very easy to listen to in 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:47.560 this episode of Cleaned it Up as best I can, 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.880 And next time it'll sound just like normal, we promise. Thanks, 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:57.520 enjoy the show. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:07.040 production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:09.639 Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:13.240 Joe McCormick. In today we're gonna be talking about mostly 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:18.520 focusing on a classic psychology paper about an effect in 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:22.360 uh in a kind of social cognitive bias known as 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:25.600 the spotlight effect. But to get into this subject, I 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:27.760 wanted to start off by thinking about something that a 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:30.360 lot of people have found themselves doing in the past 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:33.120 few months of people who maybe this wasn't part of 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:36.360 your job very much recently, but now you spend a 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:42.120 significant portion of your day in web video meetings, staring 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:45.480 at little boxes of your co workers faces on a 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:49.800 computer screen, or maybe just staring at your own face 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.239 a lot. Yes, uh, I mean, in fact, right now 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:56.080 is Joe and I are recording this. We are using 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:58.840 a Zoom call. We are using a Zoom conference room 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:01.360 to communicate with each other, and then we're using some 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:04.799 other programs and what not to to actually record it. 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:07.160 But yeah, a lot of people are having to You 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:08.760 may be using something different. You might be using what 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:14.840 there's like Google meet, Microsoft meeting, like Facebook flop. I 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:17.000 mean they're like a million of them, right, I mean 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:21.400 this is an optagram. Yeah, it's a growth industry figuring 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:23.160 out and it makes sense, right. We need to still 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:25.000 be able to connect with each other, We still need 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:28.800 to have meaningful meetings and all of those less meaningful 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:32.280 meetings and in order to keep the gears of business 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:36.320 grinding away. Right. Yeah. And one of the strange things 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:38.600 I've noticed, and I've read other people noticing the exact 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:42.760 same thing, is that you might expect that being able 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:46.400 to do a meeting from your home over the internet 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:50.320 would be maybe less exhausting than a meeting in person, 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:52.800 but somehow I have not found it to be the case. 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:58.040 I found that like, video chats can be just intensely draining, 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:00.280 like after they're over, you feel like you've been lifting 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:04.360 weights or something. Uh. And part of what's going on 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:07.480 here I found very much embodied in the spirit of 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:10.080 an article that I saw link to. It's it's just 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:12.000 a medium post, and I want to be very clear 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:14.560 that I'm not passing judgment on the author here, that 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:18.080 nothing wrong with with this person, but the title of 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:20.280 it just gave me chills. And the title of this 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:24.560 medium post was how to fake eye contact during video 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:30.680 chats and why it's important. Yes, this this was this 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:35.680 is interesting. This is what a medium article by Alexa Curtis, 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:40.760 and they made three key suggestions here. The first one 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:42.680 is to use a webcam even if no one else 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:46.280 is okay. The second is trick yourself into looking at 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:51.080 the camera instead of at the screen impossible, and then 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.200 tape your prompts, your notes, whatever to your monitor as 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:57.839 much as possible instead of having to refer to like 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:00.640 a notepad or something. Yeah, the suggest sin is like 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:04.560 make a little fake face to go around the webcam 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:07.600 box so that we're looking into the camera instead of 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:10.760 at the screen. But I just don't think it's like 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:13.480 if your face is played back on the screen, unless 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:16.440 you are able to turn your face off for yourself, 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:19.880 you just you're not going to be able to help it, 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:23.520 are you. Yeah. I actually, before I read this, I 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:27.080 kind of thought because I'd catch myself doing this. Um, 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:29.560 And now now I should say that I am lucky 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:31.640 and that I do not have to set through just 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:33.800 hours and hours of meetings today and zoom. I have 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:36.840 friends who are definitely stuck in that boat, and they 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:40.279 seem exhausted by it. We use zoom in these recordings, 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:42.440 but for the most part, we're not actually engaging in 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:45.200 the video part of it. We we have other stuff, 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.240 We have notes, stuff that we're looking at when we're recording. 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:51.600 But I have found this to be the case with 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:54.200 my My Dungeons and Dragons group, which used to meet 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:58.000 in person, but now it's forced to meet via zoom, 0:05:58.080 --> 0:05:59.680 and we have this, you know, and it's like a 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.159 two or three hour zoom called you know, like a 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:04.000 three hour zoom called it would be once a week, 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:07.680 you know, to do Dungeon and Dragons. And for some reason, 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:09.719 I've been noticing that I've just I felt kind of 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:13.200 worn out by it towards the end of of the night, 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:16.719 um in ways that I wasn't worn out previously meeting 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:19.920 in person, Like I just kind of felt zapped by it, 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:23.040 like if we were battling something. At the end, I'm 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:25.320 just kind of going through the motions. I'm just not 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:28.880 feeling it anymore at that point. Yeah, the exact same experience. 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.960 I've done social stuff via video calls. I've also been 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:35.560 doing a D and D campaign, my my first ever 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:39.440 by the way, Thank you over over Zoom, and it's 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:41.240 been a lot of fun. But yes, it is. It 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.680 is kind of exhausting to just participate in the in 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:49.800 the eyeball Tennis of of the different video faces on 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:52.880 the screen. Something about it hooks its claws into your 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:56.280 brain and just pulls and stretches and kind of needs 0:06:56.360 --> 0:07:00.240 your brain like a ball of dough. Now four only, 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:02.599 I don't know how your campaign is going, but with ours, 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:04.920 were also using a couple other resources, were Reason to 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.720 Discord Forum and we're using role twenty to pull up 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.320 maps and such. So maybe maybe we should upgrade our technology. 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:14.840 It's worth looking into. But but basically we have some 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:18.560 other things to captivate our eyes during this this process. 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:20.600 I guess one of the things about a straight up 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:24.080 like business zoom meeting is a lot of times you're 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:27.600 just stuck in those Brady bunch um cubes, right, You're 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:29.880 just you're just stuck with all these little screen pictures 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:32.240 of people and uh and some Sometimes you have it 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:34.760 set to where one will take dominance over the others, 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:36.120 but you may just be looking at a wall of 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:40.560 people's faces. And then you're thinking about again this point 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.239 of should I be making eye contact with everybody? Should 0:07:43.240 --> 0:07:47.360 I be focusing on trying to be the most presentable, 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:49.880 you know, the most professional looking, Like when they look 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:53.080 at my little box, it's like watching a TV broadcast 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:56.240 and I'm making direct eye contact with them, maybe by 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:58.720 because i have a little sticky smiley face that I've 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:01.160 put up at the top of my computer, by the camera. 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:04.160 There are multiple ways in which this type of interaction 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.200 is not normal. I mean, of course, it's not normal 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:08.680 to be interfacing through technology at all. Of course, it's 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:10.960 kind of strange that you're not looking at the person, 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:13.560 but you're looking at the screen, so the eye contact 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.280 is off. I understand that that point in the article. 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:18.840 But at the same time, it is not normal to 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:21.920 be able to see yourself while you're talking to people. 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:25.560 I can imagine if you know you were always talking 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:28.680 to people with a mirror in your hand that was 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:32.880 reflecting your face. Yeah, people would rightfully think you were insane, 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:36.599 think that was how like self obsessed you are. But 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:39.720 you go or I don't know, or afraid of Gorgon's 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:42.080 that you always had to have a mirror in your hand. 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:44.960 And yet that's the reality we find ourselves. And I 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:47.640 know this is this is not just like our particular 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:50.040 reaction to this. This is something that that I've read 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.800 about in multiple popular articles and also not just an 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:56.000 obscure scientific articles. Like there was an article I came 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:58.560 across and I think it was Business Insider that was 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.120 called like why you can't stop up steering at yourself 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:05.920 in zoom calls? Yes, this was by Shia Fetter titled 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:08.559 a cyber psychologist explains why you can't stop steering yourself 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:12.599 on zoom calls? And everyone else is probably doing the same, um, 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:16.200 which I I have caught myself doing this, sometimes during 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:20.320 donuts and dragons, sometimes during work calls, where you know 0:09:20.520 --> 0:09:22.160 you want to check in, you want to see how 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:24.560 you were presenting to the rest of the world. But 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:28.160 then it's often easy to sort of, you know, to 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:30.160 to to. You're looking at these wall of faces, and 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:32.640 then you decide to maximize your own, and you're like, 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:34.600 all right, let's see, how's the light hitting me, what's 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.560 my hair doing right now? How presented my smiling weird? 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:40.679 My smiling weird? Do I look do I look engage? 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:46.440 Or do I look as bored as I feel? You know? Um? 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:49.360 And so that's what this article gets into a little 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:51.840 of that year. So m the article discusses some key 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:55.839 points made by cyber psychologist Andrew Franklin. So the first 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:59.200 one is that in general, adolescents tend to suffer from 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:02.640 the imagine very audience delusion, the idea that people in 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:05.920 the surroundings are really paying attention to every move they make, 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:09.800 and this often follows us into adulthood as well. Yeah, 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:12.720 and this I think is pretty close to or perhaps 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:15.240 even just another name for the main issue we're going 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:17.720 to be focusing on today and otherwise known as the 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:21.920 spotlight effect. Yes, now, one thing about this, this point 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:25.960 about adolescents. Uh, I mean, this is of course terrifying 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:29.319 to think about, given the nature of social media, which 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.840 is pretty much predicated on this sort of celebrity aspiring 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:38.040 notion of a constant audience. And uh and and one 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:41.400 tends to drift to extremes and reaction to that, right, 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:44.600 this feeling that every word I put on the Internet, 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:47.880 or every video, every whatever is vitally important. It will 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:51.600 be viewed by potentially everyone in the world. Yes, You're 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:55.360 not just constantly on view, you are constantly being reviewed, 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:58.400 is the perception. Yeah, I know obviously that's it's gonna 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:01.200 vary from person person, or some people are gonna use 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:03.959 social media in a way that hasn't far more limited 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:07.320 scope only close friends or maybe even family, maybe just 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:11.160 one person can see you know. But but but yeah, 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:13.280 it does make me wonder and this would have to 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:15.840 be a you know, a discussion for another time, like 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.880 just what what what is happening when this spotlight effect, 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:24.280 this imaginary audience delusion is playing uh into our use 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:29.360 of social media. Yeah, but also so this psychology professor 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:33.000 Andrew Franklin also makes the point that, like, it's not 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:37.640 just an illusion that like video chats are actually exhausting. Yeah, yeah, 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:40.199 to make the point of video chats are more stressful 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:43.040 than in person meetings, and a big part of that 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:47.320 is just everything is more distracted, more fragmented, and we 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:52.400 have muted or severely lessened nonverbal communicative skills. So you 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:54.480 think of a lot of this is kind of an 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:57.400 overstatement of the obvious. But you can do far less 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:00.280 with your body language, not only your overt bodyline, which 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:02.360 like talking with your hands and waving down people to 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:04.400 the other side of the table, but in terms of 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:08.640 just having a bodily awareness of what everyone is doing 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:11.079 and how they are sort of reacting to what's going on, 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.080 and if someone else is about to speak or needs 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:17.600 to speak. Yes, And it's actually hard to tell who's 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:20.760 looking at who, Like you can assume if there are 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:23.800 a bunch of Brady bunch boxes that people are probably 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:26.640 looking if they're not looking at themselves, they're probably looking 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.560 at the person who's currently talking, but maybe not. You 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:32.760 can't tell. Yeah, And and it's also weird to think, 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:34.959 like I guess maybe some of you out there had 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:37.120 more of like a you know, rules of order kind 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.280 of a upbringing or or you know, you have some 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:42.480 more training and think, Okay, this is how this is 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:44.720 how a business meeting goes, this is how a work 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:47.280 meeting operates. But I feel for my part, a lot 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:48.600 of it's just kind of you just learn it to go, 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:50.800 just sort of figure out what is the culture of 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:53.720 this group and this meeting, and and how am I 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:56.040 supposed to fit in? And then to a certain extent, 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.280 it feels like we've had to relearn all of that 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:00.920 or augment our understand ending of that based on the 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:04.040 limitations of the technology. Yeah, I think that's totally right, 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:06.600 and and I would I would emphasize yet again that 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:12.280 not all digital socialization skills are are interchangeable or transferable 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:15.479 to one another. So you might have been well acclimatized 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:18.320 to the social skills one needs in order to interact 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:22.400 through a different type of mediated social media like like 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:26.280 Facebook or Twitter or something like that, and still not 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:28.920 really have any skills for how to interact via a 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:31.480 video chat. It's just like a different set of skills, 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:33.840 a different set of things to get used to. Yeah, 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:38.200 it's a different talking stick entirely now now. Franklin also 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:40.480 drives something that given the strain of keeping up with 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:44.040 everyone's tiny boxes and concern over how you yourself look 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:48.200 in your box, you might easily find yourself just looking 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:51.320 at yourself, staring into the digital mirror and fixating on 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.880 how you appear to friends, co workers, and bosses and 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:58.800 and Franklin maintains that this means you're likely overwhelmed by proceedings, 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:02.120 which which I totally get. Again, even with the low 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:05.600 stakes confines of a Dungeons and Dragons, you know, nothing 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:07.960 huge is on the line here, But by the end 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:09.839 of the of the session again, I often find myself 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:12.480 kind of zapped in ways that I never felt before 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:16.160 within person gaming. And even though we're staring into that 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:20.960 digital reflection of our own face, Franklin stresses that people 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:24.960 are ultimately not fixating on you like you think they are. 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:28.080 They are not setting there watching you and you know, 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:32.280 dissecting everything about your appearance and in your background and 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:35.440 what your face is doing it in any given set. Yeah. No, 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:39.080 They're probably much more likely fixating on themselves the same 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:43.520 way you are fixating on yourself. Uh. And so this 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:45.560 brings us back to the cognitive bias that we're gonna 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.120 be focusing on in today's episode, also known as the 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:52.640 spotlight effect. And this effect is very interesting because, on 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:56.640 one hand, I think it's one of the simplest psychological 0:14:56.680 --> 0:14:58.920 phenomena we've ever talked about on the show. It's actually 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:03.440 very simple to or it's very straightforward in a way. 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:05.960 But it's one of those things where if you really 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:10.800 internalize it, it's implications could be kind of life changing. Yeah, 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:13.640 it's one of these things that doesn't I wouldn't say 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:17.640 that it really like changes the nature of your reality, 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:21.960 but it brings certain aspects of it into maybe sharper focus. 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:26.280 You might realize, Oh, well, okay, that explains some of 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.400 the things I feel when I am in a meeting 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.600 or you know, just walking around. Um uh, you know, 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:36.840 in a public space or or whatever the case may be. Um, 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:40.480 I do feel like it does it does It does 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:44.000 feel like a revelation of it in its own way. Yeah. 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:46.520 So the main paper that I wanted to focus on 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:49.160 today was published in the year two thousand in the 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:54.360 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Thomas Gilovich, Victoria 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:58.000 who Staid Medvec and Kenneth Savitsky, and it's called the 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:02.200 spotlight effect in social judgment, an ecocentric bias, and estimates 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:06.080 of the salience of one zone actions and appearance. You 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:08.920 can pretty easily find a full PDF of this online 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:10.840 if you want to read it. And this is a 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.840 highly cited paper. It has been referred to many many 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:16.600 times in the years since as a kind of seminal 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:20.040 work on this on this social cognitive bias. So the 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:25.920 authors begin with some anecdotal observations, and these observations are 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:29.160 that for both good and ill, it often seems like 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:33.160 stuff you expect other people to notice and recall about 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:38.240 you really goes unnoticed. Uh. And also on the good side, 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:42.160 that might be like something smart that you said in 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.560 a discussion group. You're like really pleased with yourself that like, oh, 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:47.520 I had that really good insight or I made that 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.600 really funny joke, and then it turns out later that 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:54.200 nobody else seems to recall that you said anything. Or 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:58.400 perhaps this often actually happens in athletic contexts, where people 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:01.280 will make a really good odd in a basketball game 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.080 or something, and they will expect people to remember that 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:06.760 they did that. But then maybe it turns out that 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:09.919 nobody really noticed. It just kind of was one of 0:17:09.920 --> 0:17:12.399 the goals in a game in which many goals were scored. 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:15.320 And as frustrating as this can be, it can also 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:17.640 kind of be a relief that it works the other 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:21.680 way to People often don't seem to have noticed when 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:25.560 you make what feels like a really obvious mistake faux 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:28.800 paw on a first meeting, or when you misspeak and 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:31.760 what feels like an embarrassing way, or that time you 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:34.439 had spinach in your teeth, like you obsess over that 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.200 and you're afraid it's going to completely ruin your reputation, 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:40.480 that everybody's gonna remember you for that thing forever. But 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:43.600 a lot of times it seems like maybe nobody even noticed. Yeah, 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:48.119 the dual nature of this particular revelation, I think ultimately 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:50.439 it is positive because, yeah, maybe it means you're not 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:52.600 as important as you thought you were. Maybe you're not 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.879 as a it's a it's explosive the personality as you 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:58.879 thought you were. But on the other hand, uh, you know, 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:01.280 maybe the steaks a little bit lower every time you 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:04.720 open your mouth. Yeah, Yeah, that's the hypothesis at the 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:09.080 heart of this paper that these anecdotal observations are indicative 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:12.560 of a real trend that can be measured that, in general, 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:17.360 humans have an ecocentric bias that causes us to believe 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:21.560 that our actions and our appearance are much more salient 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:25.520 and notable to other people than they really are. Quote. 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:28.480 People tend to believe that more people take a note 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:31.159 of their actions and appearance than is actually the case. 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:35.800 We dubbed this putative phenomenon the spotlight effect. People tend 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:38.959 to believe that the social spotlight shines more brightly on 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:42.000 them than it really does. Yeah, this is insightful, and 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.280 I think we can all match this up pretty easily, 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:46.760 first of all with our own experiences, but also with 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:49.439 some of the ideas that we've discussed on the show before. 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:53.199 Uh specifically, First of all, there's the self narrative aspect 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.040 of our inner thoughts. You know, through the inner workings 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:59.320 of consciousness, were constantly weaving together a story about who 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:01.480 we are and how we fit into the world. It's 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:04.119 a little movie, and we're the main character, so of 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:07.120 course we're the most important person in that story. Right. 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:09.960 You're trying to link together a series of what are 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:13.600 in fact sort of random events into a cohesive narrative 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:16.399 with a logic to it, right, And then through theory 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:20.280 of mind, we're constantly running simulations about the mental states 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:24.680 of other people, specific people, people in general, known people, 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:28.840 unknown people, sort of hypothetical people. Uh. And and of 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:30.719 course one of the key aspects of any of these 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:33.680 simulations is, you know, how do they relate to me, 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:37.000 how do they think about me? What are their intentions 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:40.159 towards me? And that makes sense, right, There's an inherently 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:42.840 self centered quality to this sort of thinking because it 0:19:42.880 --> 0:19:45.440 all comes down to individual survival. We tend to air 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:48.160 on the side of seeing tigers in the grass when 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:50.720 there are none, which is better of the two possible 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.840 gambles here, But it also means going through life perpetually 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:57.200 imagining how the tiger sees you. Yeah, and so this 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:01.360 is in some ways the exact social equivalent of the 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.960 agency detection overdrive, where you, you know, over interpret a 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:07.800 crack of a twig as a tiger in the grass. Here, 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:11.480 you over interpret any little thing that that you think 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:15.159 maybe going wrong in a social interaction as something that 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:19.040 people will notice and remember and judge you for. So 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:20.800 maybe we should take a quick break and then when 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:23.080 we come back, we can get a little bit further 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:29.000 into this study. Thank you, thank you, thank Alright, we're back. Okay. 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:30.719 So we're talking about the study from the year two 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:34.480 thousand by Gilovich and co authors who are putting forth 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:37.320 this this putative phenomenon that at the time they called 0:20:37.359 --> 0:20:42.000 the spotlight effects, the idea that we overestimate the salience 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:45.639 of our appearance and our behavior to other people. And 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:49.240 the authors here note several lines of previous research that 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:52.560 helped point to this conclusion. One of them is, first 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:54.600 of all, this may not be surprising at all, but 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:58.360 people do tend to have egocentric biases that you can 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:02.600 measure quite easily and in in tests. These are biases 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:06.440 that overstate the importance of the self. Just one example 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:10.000 the site is a paper by Ross and Sickly published 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:13.600 in nineteen seventy nine called ego centric Biases and Availability 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:16.800 and Attribution, and it showed it showed this in the 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:21.560 realm of what's called responsibility allocation, Who did, how much 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:24.679 and how important was what they did? So there are 0:21:24.680 --> 0:21:27.600 several different ways you can test for this. Uh, maybe 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:33.960 in discussion groups, maybe in household chores, maybe in basketball teams. Uh, 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:38.440 quote one zone, contributions to a joint product are more 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:43.400 readily available. That is, more frequently and easily recalled. Individuals 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:47.560 accepted more responsibility for a group product than other participants 0:21:47.560 --> 0:21:50.760 attributed to them. So the easy way of thinking about 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:55.160 this is, oh, our team one, because I scored that goal. Yeah, 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:58.720 I kind of this particularly telling. The authors point out 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:03.680