People tend to believe that others are paying more attention to them than they actually are—in other words, our tendency to always feel like we are “in the spotlight.” This bias shows up frequently in our day-to-day lives, both in positive situations (like when we nail a presentation and overestimate how impressed all our co-workers must be) and in negative ones (like when we bomb the presentation and feel like everybody must be laughing about it behind our backs). #judgment ##### Related studies: 1. Brown, M. A., & Stopa, L. (2007). The spotlight effect and the illusion of transparency in social anxiety. _Journal of Anxiety Disorders_, _21_(6), 804-819. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.11.006](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.11.006) 2. Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. _Journal of Experimental Social Psychology_, _13_(3), 279-301. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(77)90049-x 3. Lovallo, D., & Kahneman, D. (2003, July). _Delusions of success: How optimism undermines executives’ decisions_. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2003/07/delusions-of-success-how-optimism-undermines-executives-decisions 4. Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G., & Prelec, D. (2006). Tom Sawyer and the construction of value. _The Construction of Preference_, _60_, 271-281. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511618031.015 5. Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: An egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one's own actions and appearance. _Journal of Personality and Social Psychology_, _78_(2), 211-222. [https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.211](https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.211) 6. Gilovich, T., Savitsky, K., & Medvec, V. H. (1998). The illusion of transparency: Biased assessments of others' ability to read one's emotional states. _Journal of Personality and Social Psychology_, _75_(2), 332-346. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.75.2.332 7. Crosby, J. R., King, M., & Savitsky, K. (2014). The minority spotlight effect. _Social Psychological and Personality Science_, _5_(7), 743-750. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550614527625 8. Bendix, A. (2015, October 15). _It's Time to Ditch the Stigma of Doing Things Alone_. Bloomberg CityLab. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-15/why-more-people-are-eating-and-traveling-alone ##### Examples: - [[Illusion of Transparency]] - [[Observer Expectancy Effect]]