A prayer
Synthesis
“We live in an evolutionarily novel anonymous society, so most people’s opinions of me – good or ill – are inert. As long as I please key actors in my immediate social network, I do fine. Tyler Cowen’s pro-Caplan stance has changed my life far more than the negative opinions of hundreds of my classmates …
“We’d worry far less about what other people thought about us if we realized how little they think about us at all.” In hindsight, the vast majority of the “hundreds of classmates” who seemed to dislike me were barely aware I was alive …
[“The Spotlight Effect in Social Judgment” reasearch] show that individuals underestimate their social invisibility … People seem to believe that the social spotlight shines more brightly on them than it truly does.
Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is reflected in the widespread fear of having a “bad hair day.” … The variability that an individual readily perceives in his or her own appearance is likely to be lost on most observers. To others, one’s putative bad hair days may be indistinguishable from the good. This phenomenon is hardly limited to physical appearance, of course. Academics, who frequently deliver the same lecture numerous times, are often surprised to find that marked fluctuations in their own assessment of their performance (whether they “nailed” or “bombed” a talk) are not met by corresponding fluctuations in their audiences’ reactions. The variability that one so readily sees in oneself–and expects others to see as well– often goes largely unnoticed
Study 1 who were asked to don an embarrassing T-shirt overestimated the number of observers who noted that it was the singer Barry Manilow pictured on the shirt. Participants in Study 2 who were asked to wear T-shirts bearing the images of figures of their own choosing from popular culture likewise overestimated the number of observers who noted the individuals depicted on their shirts. Contributors to a group discussion in Study 3 thought their minor gaffes and positive contributions to the session stood out more to their fellow discussants than they actually did. It thus appears that people overestimate the extent to which others are attentive to the details of their actions and appearance.