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The Spotlight Effect in Social Judgment

Gilovich, Medvec & Savitsky (2000) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2)

Relied on in 7 places across the academy · 4 stated limits

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What it found

Students wearing an embarrassing T-shirt estimated that around half the room would notice; roughly a quarter did. In a second study they estimated 48% would identify the figure on the shirt — 8% could.

Students made to wear an embarrassing T-shirt guessed about half the room would notice; roughly a quarter did. Observers register a fraction of what the wearer feels is broadcast.

Across a series of experiments, people substantially overestimated how much observers noticed their appearance and their blunders; observers recalled far less than the actor assumed.

Students wearing an embarrassing T-shirt guessed about half the room would notice; roughly a quarter did. The refused ask you replay all week registered far less on their side.

1 more phrasings of the same finding

Students wearing an embarrassing T-shirt estimated around half the room would notice; roughly a quarter did. In a second study with non-embarrassing shirts they estimated 48% could identify the figure on the shirt — 8% could.

What it does not show

Undergraduates in staged situations — an embarrassing t-shirt, a group discussion. It measures how much observers actually noticed, not how much anybody should worry.

And where we carry it further

T-shirts in a lecture room, not presence in a bar. We extend the direction of the error, not the numbers.

Measured with embarrassing t-shirts and laboratory tasks rather than with jokes.

Undergraduates in staged situations. It measures how much a moment registered with observers, not how a refusal sits with the person who refused.

T-shirts in a lecture room, not rejections in a bar. We extend the direction of the error, not the numbers.

Where we rely on it

7 places in the academy. If this paper turned out to be wrong, this is the list that would have to change. Some of the instructions below are part of Gold; none of the findings are.

Cited alongside it

Papers that sit under the same topics and films. Not a claim that they agree with each other — only that the same exercises lean on both.

Research

A real study. We tell you what it found, how many people were in it, and what it can't prove.

Free to read, link to and quote. If we have carried this paper further than it goes, say so at contact@suaviq.com — corrections to this registry are the most useful mail we get.