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We tend to overestimate how much other people notice our appearance and our small mistakes; psychologists call this the spotlight effect. In a study published in 2000, students made to wear an embarrassing T-shirt guessed that about half the people in a room would remember it; in fact only about one in five did.

Gilovich, Medvec and Savitsky, 2000

Mind

The story behind the card

The study was run at Cornell University by the psychologist Thomas Gilovich with Victoria Husted Medvec and Kenneth Savitsky. Students put on a T-shirt showing the singer Barry Manilow, a choice the researchers expected to embarrass them, and walked into a room where other students sat facing the door. In further experiments, people in group discussions also overestimated how much the others had noticed their good and bad remarks. The researchers' explanation is a kind of anchoring: we start from our own vivid sense of what we did or how we look, then fail to adjust enough for the fact that others are busy with their own concerns. A related bias, the illusion of transparency, makes us think our nervousness shows more than it does. The effect is an average tendency: some people do notice, just fewer than we fear.

Türkçe oku
Başkalarının görünüşümüzü ve küçük hatalarımızı ne kadar fark ettiğini çoğu zaman abartırız; psikolojide buna spot ışığı etkisi denir. 2000'de yayımlanan bir çalışmada, utandırıcı bir tişört giymeleri istenen öğrenciler odadakilerin yaklaşık yarısının bunu hatırlayacağını tahmin etti; gerçekte hatırlayanlar beşte bir kadardı.
Gilovich, Medvec ve Savitsky, 2000

Çalışmayı Cornell Üniversitesi'nde psikolog Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Husted Medvec ve Kenneth Savitsky ile birlikte yürüttü. Öğrencilere şarkıcı Barry Manilow'un resmi basılı bir tişört giydirildi; araştırmacılar bunun onları utandıracağını düşünmüştü. Tişörtü giyen öğrenci, başka öğrencilerin kapıya dönük oturduğu bir odaya girdi. Başka deneylerde de grup tartışmasına katılanlar, söyledikleri iyi ya da kötü sözlerin ötekilerin ne kadar dikkatini çektiğini abarttı. Araştırmacılar bunu bir tür çıpalama ile açıklar: Kendi yaptığımızı ya da nasıl göründüğümüzü çok canlı biçimde yaşadığımız için bu duyguyu çıkış noktası alırız, ama başkalarının kendi dertleriyle meşgul olduğunu yeterince hesaba katmayız. Buna yakın bir başka yanılgı da şeffaflık yanılsamasıdır: Heyecanımızın dışarıdan gerçekte olduğundan çok daha fazla belli olduğunu sanırız. Yine de bu ortalama bir eğilimdir: Fark edenler olur, yalnızca korktuğumuzdan azdır.

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Background reading: Spotlight effect
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