Steve: The Spotlight Effect

By: steve-wang

The spotlight effect is the effect which makes people think everyone is paying attention to them or looking at them. There might be a few reasons why people are affected so much by this effect. Some of them include, wanting to belong to a group (social acceptance), self esteem, social comparison, and fear of rejection. These things will cause people to care deeply about what others think about them. One of the things people who are under the spotlight effect are self-conscious of is their appearance. They are sensitive to physical appearance because this is something that everyone can see. Physical appearance also affects their self esteem and people can use appearance to get acceptance or rejected. For instance if a person looks very friendly, this might cause people to want to talk to them. Social performance is another thing that people under the spotlight effect can be sensitive to because it is another thing that everyone can see which will cause comparison. Being skilled in an area can help one get accepted in an area or rejected in the same area if they are not skilled enough. During my younger year, I had also fallen into the spotlight effect. I was at a cafe and was folding some paper as a project for school. I was worried that everyone was looking at me weird and judging me. I felt this was because I thought it was embarrassing to be folding paper swans in public. I also did not want other people to see me doing this because I thought folding paper was something childish. Furthermore, I was very bad at it. That would bruise my ego. Also the group of people I was trying to fit in thought folding paper was childish and uncool. So, folding paper effected by ego and my ability to find social acceptance which caused me a to be scared of being seen. A few ways people can try to deal with the spotlight effect is, reminding themselves that people have better things to do than to look at you and judge you. People should also remember that they are not that important and try relaxation exercises.