Living in the spotlight

Many of us today lead busy lives. We are focused on our family, friends, our job, the people we come in contact with and to a greater or lesser degree how we appear to other people. A series of tests carried out in 2000 by Thomas Gilovich and his colleagues, found that as a rule, people significantly overestimated the extent to which others noticed them. They dubbed this phenomenon “the spotlight effect”.

In the first study, conducted by Gilovich, a group of students was asked to wear an embarrassing tshirt and briefly enter a room where other students were seated. As they left the room each participant was asked to estimate how many people in the room would be able to remember what was printed on their tshirt. All of the participants substantially overestimated the number who noticed their tshirt.

The second study replicated the first but this time the students wore a tshirt they were comfortable with. Again when asked how many people in the room would recall the image on their tshirts, they overestimated the number, suggesting that the spotlight effect can still be triggered in non-embarrassing situations.

A further study examined whether the spotlight effect extended to people’s actions as well as their appearance. Following a discussion about problems in inner cities, the participants estimated how the group would rate their contribution and the contributions of each of the other members of the group to the discussion. The results matched those of the previous studies with participants significantly overestimating the impressions, both positive and negative, they had made on the other members in the group.

Most of us will have experienced the spotlight effect at various times throughout our lives. We have all had embarrassing moments when we thought everyone was looking at us, like when we tripped and fell in public or our car stalled at the traffic lights. We may have felt awkward walking in late to a meeting or a room full of strangers. But for most of us, the self-consciousness didn’t last and no lingering trauma occured.

It’s a very different story, however, for people who suffer with an Anxiety Disorder. For them the spotlight effect can be an extremely challenging and disabling encounter intruding into all aspects of their daily living and impairing their ability to function.

Imagine not being able to ask for something in a shop because anxiety makes you think other customers are listening to what you are saying and judging you; not being able to put petrol in your car because you think everyone is looking at you and you know you will be all fingers and thumbs; unable to enjoy a meal in a restaurant because in your mind all eyes are on you and what you are eating; afraid to offer an opinion because of what people might think; prevented from enjoying the simple things like going for a walk, a cycle or a run because you believe everyone is staring at you; unable to cross the street because according to your automatic thoughts drivers are giving you dirty looks and won’t stop for you.

Living in the spotlight is no joke. It is a crippling, debilitating and exhausting sensation that undermines the confidence and self-worth of the person experiencing it.

So what gives rise to this spotlight effect and what can we do about it? The spotlight effect is the result of egocentrism. Anxious people are more egocentric than people experiencing neutral feelings, not in a way that is self-centered or self-absorbed, but because of their constant negative thoughts about how others view them. When people get anxious they focus inward and this makes them less able to accurately identify another’s perspective and realise that it may be different from their own. The spotlight effect is explained by a process known as anchoring-and-adjustment. We are “anchored” in our own perspective but insufficiently “adjust” to the perspective of others giving rise to a distorted view of our importance to other people.

How then to overcome this exaggerated belief that we are at the centre of everyone else’s universe as well as our own? Avoidance is a popular maladaptive coping strategy among people with anxiety. It offers temporary relief from a feared situation but by avoiding experiences that trigger the spotlight effect, anxious people never learn just how threatening a situation really is, how dire the consequences would be if the threat were actually to happen and they never realise their ability to cope with just such a situation. In Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) exposure exercises (where clients confront their fears) are used to help a person with anxiety challenge their feared experiences and correct their maladaptive beliefs about their ability to cope.

Think about your first day in school or college or when you started a new job. Think about how anxious you felt. But after a few weeks when you got to know people and know your way around, you no longer felt anxious. This is called habituation, which is just a fancy way of saying you got used to it and it ceased to be a problem. According to Gilovich and his team, repeated exposure and habituation can lessen the spotlight effect and in some cases reverse it.

No one is saying it’s easy and the hardest part of course is taking that first step. For people with anxiety it’s important to remember to be kind and compassionate towards yourself and in doing so reduce the self-criticism, shame and guilt that so often accompanies living in the spotlight. With small steps every day, push yourself to ask for that magazine in the shop, to walk down the street or through the shopping centre with your head held high, to stand in a queue and order that cup of coffee, to cycle through the park, go to the gym or join a class, to sit on a park bench or a bench anywhere without your mobile phone as a prop and let the world drift by, to express an opinion without fear of ridicule.

And after each exposure give yourself credit for your effort. Say something like, “That was hard but I did it”. Keep your own “Credit Card” where you write down every day all the things you’ve attempted. Expose yourself to the spotlight as often as you can and watch its brilliance grow dim.

References

Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H. and Savitsky, K. (2000) The spotlight effect in social judgement: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one’s own actions and appearance, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol.78 (2), pp. 211-222.