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Key points
- We often feel like we are in the spotlight and that people notice many things about how we look.
- In the spotlight effect, we overestimate how easily people will notice what we look like or the things we do.
- People don’t notice the details of changes in our appearance.
- It would be nice to have some things noticed, like a haircut. But such changes are often unremarked.
Do you feel like you’re in the spotlight? Like everyone is looking at you, evaluating how you look and what you’re wearing? Or maybe you’re invisible.
Sometimes it feels like we are in a spotlight. We walk into a room and the eyes turn toward us. We worry about what people see. Are they looking at my hair? Are they evaluating my clothes? Do I fit in?
But we may also feel invisible sometimes, as though no one can see us. We wear something really nice or get a haircut, but no one notices. No one compliments us on our new look.
Are We in the Spotlight, or Are We Invisible?
People often feel like they’re in the spotlight. They feel that everyone notices important and minor aspects of how they look and what they do. This is the spotlight effect.
In the first investigation of the spotlight effect, college students were asked to wear a potentially embarrassing T-shirt as they walked into a room with other students. What T-shirt, you wonder? Barry Manilow. The students knew who Barry Manilow was, and most were embarrassed at being asked to wear the shirt. I wouldn’t want to wear that shirt into a new group of my peers—what would people think?
Gilovich and colleagues (2000) found that most people believed the other students would notice their shirt—they thought they would be in the spotlight. But very few people noticed the shirt. Instead of placing them in the spotlight, the lovely Barry Manilow T-shirt was invisible.
Gilovich and colleagues replicated this but instead of an embarrassing T-shirt, the students could wear a T-shirt about which they could hopefully feel good. And again, the students thought they would be in the spotlight—they believed people would notice their now cool T-shirt. But the T-shirt remained invisible. Others had no idea what cool person was pictured on their shirt. Neither the embarrassing nor cool shirts were noticed.
Do People Notice Changes in Appearance?
People clearly don’t notice what you’re wearing when you walk into the room. But do they notice if you change what you’re wearing?
In a different investigation, Timothy Lawson (2010), had a group of college students meet for an experiment. They first met in one room but then moved to another. The researchers asked one person to help carry some material—and, critically, had that person put on a different sweatshirt before rejoining the other students. Surely, the other students would notice that the person has changed their clothes—it’s only been a few moments since they last saw them. The person who put on a new sweatshirt believed most people would notice. They thought that since they walked into the room late, wearing a new shirt, people would notice.
But again, hardly anyone noticed. The change of clothing was invisible. You can leave the room, quickly change your clothes, come back in, and people will be oblivious to your new attire.
The Good News About Being Invisible
So: Are you in the spotlight or are you invisible? We often feel we’re in the spotlight. But in general, we’re mostly invisible.
I see this as a good news/bad news situation. It is nice to know that people aren’t noticing everything about how I look and behave. They may not notice the stain on my shirt, my bad haircut, or how tired I look. Really, people only notice and encode limited amounts of information about each other. This is clear from the work on change blindness. When something changes from one view to the next, people have a hard time becoming aware of what’s changed—even when looking for it. If they aren’t looking, then they rarely notice.
Even incredibly large changes will be missed. For example, in a classic demonstration of change blindness, a person asked someone for directions on a college campus. During the conversation, two people carrying a door walked between the individuals giving and receiving directions. A switch happened, and the person asking for directions carried the door away while a new person finished the conversation.
Most people failed to notice that the person changed (Simons & Levin, 1998). They have a general idea about the person they were talking with. As long as the new person matches that vague idea, they won’t notice the change. Even when the person you’re talking with changes, you will often fail to notice the change. So we don’t need to worry that everyone notices every little thing we wear or do.
The Bad News About Being Invisible
The bad news is that people often don’t notice changes. If you are wearing something new and interesting, you want people to see it. If you get a new haircut, you hope that people notice. But they don’t. Instead, we have a vague idea about what each other looks like. The new image of our friend, with the new haircut, looks essentially the same as the previous version. We see the person, but fail to notice the change. It is important that our friends recognize us as the same person, even after we’ve changed clothes or gotten a haircut. And they do. They see us as the same. But it would also be nice if they noticed, and complimented, our haircut.
The conclusion here is simple. We often feel like a spotlight is shining on us. But in reality, other people don’t notice everything about us. They may have only a very limited understanding of what we look like. We’re more likely to be invisible.
Facebook/LinkedIn image: Vovatol/Shutterstock
References
Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one's own actions and appearance. Journal of personality and social psychology, 78(2), 211-222.
Lawson, T. J. (2010). The social spotlight increases blindness to change blindness. Basic and applied social psychology, 32(4), 360-368.
Simons, D. J., & Levin, D. T. (1998). Failure to detect changes to people during a real-world interaction. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 5(4), 644-649.
