Three sets of studies provide evidence for an illusion of transparency, or a tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others can discern their internal states. People often mistakenly believe that their internal states "leak out" more than they really do. The authors attribute this bias to a tendency for people to adjust insufficiently from the "anchor" of their own phenomenological experience when attempting to take another's perspective. Evidence for this illusion is provided by showing that liars overestimate the detectability of their lies (Studies la, lb, and lc) and that people believe their feelings of disgust are more apparent than they actually are (Studies 2a and 2b). A final pair of experiments (Studies 3a and 3b) explores the implications of the illusion of transparency for people's reluctance to intervene in emergencies. All 3 sets of studies also provide evidence consistent with the proposed anchoring and adjustment interpretation. Fans of Edgar Allan Poe will recall that the key passage in The TellTale Heart is one in which the protagonist does his best to play it cool during a conversation with three police officers. It is a performance made more difficult by the fact that the officers happen to be standing directly above the hidden body of the protagonist's murder victim. As he becomes increasingly anxious that the officers suspect his guilt, he begins to hear what he takes to be his victim's heart beating underneath the floorboards. He becomes convinced that the sound, which in reality is the beating of his own heart, can be heard by the officers as well. Eventually, his emotions get the best of him and he gives himself away:
This research provides evidence that people overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others, a phenomenon dubbed the spotlight effect. In Studies 1 and 2, participants who were asked to don a T-shirt depicting either a flattering or potentially embarrassing image overestimated the number of observers who would be able to recall what was pictured on the shirt. In Study 3, participants in a group discussion overestimated how prominent their positive and negative utterances were to their fellow discussants. Studies 4 and 5 provide evidence supporting an anchoring-and-adjustment interpretation of the spotlight effect. In particular, people appear to anchor on their own rich phenomenological experience and then adjust--insufficiently--to take into account the perspective of others. The discussion focuses on the manifestations and implications of the spotlight effect across a host of everyday social phenomena.
A two-phased experiment tested the hypothesis that the presumption of guilt that underlies police interrogations activates a process of behavioral confirmation. In Phase I, 52 suspects guilty or innocent of a mock theft were questioned by 52 interrogators led to believe that most suspects were guilty or innocent. Interrogators armed with guilty as opposed to innocent expectations selected more guilt-presumptive questions, used more interrogation techniques, judged the suspect to be guilty, and exerted more pressure to get a confession-particularly when paired with innocent suspects. In Phase II, neutral observers listened to audiotapes of the suspect, interrogator, or both. They perceived suspects in the guilty expectations condition as more defensive-and as somewhat more guilty. Results indicate that a presumption of guilt sets in motion a process of behavioral confirmation by which expectations influence the interrogator's behavior, the suspect's behavior, and ultimately the judgments of neutral observers.
When people suffer an embarrassing blunder, social mishap, or public failure, they often feel that their image has been severely tarnished in the eyes of others. Four studies demonstrate that these fears are commonly exaggerated. Actors who imagined committing one of several social blunders (Study 1), who experienced a public intellectual failure (Studies 2 and 3), or who were described in an embarrassing way (Study 4) anticipated being judged more harshly by others than they actually were. These exaggerated fears were produced, in part, by the actors' tendency to be inordinately focused on their misfortunes and by their resulting failure to consider the wider range of situational factors that tend to moderate onlookers' impressions. Discussion focuses on additional mechanisms that may contribute to overly pessimistic expectations as well as the role of such expectations in producing unnecessary social anxiety. Most people have experienced the fear of "sticking out like a sore thumb." One may feel this way when dining alone at a restaurant, when accidentally setting off the security alarm in a library, or as the one guest at a party who failed to notice that the invitation specified formal attire-, not sandals and a Hawaiian shirt. Much of the force behind one's reaction to these situations stems from the conviction that others will notice and attend to one's status as an outlier. But how realistic are such concerns? In previous research we have shown that they tend to be exaggerated-that people often overestimate the extent to which others notice their appearance and behavior, both in their moments of triumph and, perhaps especially, in their moments of chagrin. People commonly believe, in other words, that the "social spotlight" shines more brightly on them than it actually does, a phenomenon we have dubbed the spotlight effect
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