Spotlight Effect: Making A Hen Out Of A Feather

The spotlight effect is when people exaggerate all their defects and shortcomings, no matter how small they are. The victims of this phenomenon experience that others always observe them. They think everyone wants to judge the slightest mistake they make. Although it is more common among teenagers, adults can also suffer from it.

A person suffering from the spotlight effect will be terrified to see a pimple on their face. He believes that everyone will notice this small shortcoming. In the same way, he imagines that others always speak behind his back and criticize him. Two contradictory situations occur in his head:  on the one hand he has low self-esteem, but on the other hand he feels that he is the center of the world .

Advertisers are well aware of the spotlight effect. This is why countless commercials show a group of people criticizing a lone person who does not use a particular product. For example, these may be groups that expel people because they do not use a particular brand. It goes without saying that people who suffer from the spotlight effect are easy prey for this type of advertising.

What is the spotlight effect?

The spotlight effect  is the tendency to exaggerate one’s own characteristics or personal behaviors. This happens especially when the person thinks that one of her shortcomings will be noticeable or significant to others. However, she does not realize that most people do not care that her T-shirt has a stain.

It can be said that this effect is just another form of paranoia. A paranoid person feels special, different and chosen, but that is not because of narcissism. Instead, he feels guilty about something he is not really aware of. Therefore, he projects all his guilt on others. For this reason, it seems in his head that everyone is judging him. At the same time, these feelings of guilt are balanced with a sense of superiority.

People who suffer from this effect maintain the image that they are better than everyone else. Therefore, they become extremely dependent on other people’s opinions. On the one hand, they need to capture people’s attention in some way; on the other hand, they are also afraid of others, because in their minds others are relentlessly judgmental.

An eye-opening experiment

Some researchers conducted an experiment on the spotlight effect at Cornell University. The experiment consisted of gathering a group of volunteers and asking them to choose a sweater they considered ugly. Then they had to wear it for a whole day and count how many people noticed it.

After completing the first part of the experiment  , the researchers asked them to report who noticed them in their embarrassing sweater. They also talked to these people to compare their answers. In the end, many of the volunteers were very wrong in estimating how many people noticed it. The results showed that less than half of the reported “observers” had actually noticed the shirt.

How to get over the spotlight effect

In order to overcome difficulties that lie in the subconscious, experts recommend that you undergo psychological therapy. However, there are other measures you can take in the short term that have proven to be effective:

• Examine the validity of your assumptions: it is worth recreating Cornell University’s experiments on a personal scale. You can try asking others if they noticed a specific mistake you made or something embarrassing.
• Analyze the reasons why you feel ashamed:  it is good to think about why you think your mistakes or shortcomings are so serious. What’s so horrible about them? Why would others be so intolerant of them?

• Think of something positive:  to combat these negative emotions, you can try to think of something positive. What makes you valuable? Why would a pimple on your face or a stain on your shirt make you less valuable?

Furthermore, it would be interesting to take a closer look at why you feel so insecure about who you are. The spotlight effect shows up in people who have not been able to accept themselves.