 Hey guys, my name is Elaniel Davis for Psych2Go and today I'm going to be talking about the article All Lies on Me the Spotlight Effect by Jenny Kang. Have you ever done something really embarrassing and felt like everyone was noticing? Like you got a stain on your shirt and you walked through school or you walked through the mall and you just feel like everyone is looking at the stain on your shirt? If you felt something like this then you were experiencing the spotlight effect. The spotlight effect was coined in 1999 by Kenneth Sabitsky and Thomas Gilovich. They were trying to give a name of the phenomenon of feeling like more people are noticing something about you or something that you did than are probably actually noticing as if everyone is staring at you when in reality not every person is staring at you. The reason that we experience the spotlight effect at all is purely because of where our perspective is, which is from us. So anything that we do, anything that happens to us has more priority of us noticing it than anything else happening to anyone else or anywhere else because this is front and center in our view. In short, we actually care more about the things that happen to us than anyone else simply because of our perspective of what we notice first and what we experience firsthand. But when you realize that this is happening to you, you have to also realize that it's happening to everyone else. Your perspective is focused on you. Their perspective is also focused on them. So even though you know that you have that stain on your shirt as you're walking through the mall, not everyone is going to actually notice. They are far more interested in the way that they look than the way that you look because the way that they look matters most to them. We forget sometimes that not everyone notices the things that we notice or not everyone pays attention to the things that we pay attention to. So even though we're really worried, really we don't have any actual reason to because everyone else is probably thinking about something embarrassing that happened to them or they're really concerned that they don't look on point today like I am. I just got off work so this is not my hottest appearance but I'm making a video anyway because you probably didn't even actually care, did you? You didn't realize that my hair has been in a hair net basically all day but I did and I'm thinking about that right now, oh god I should probably stop with this. But look, it's okay. You can relax. Not everyone is noticing that stain. Not everyone remembers that embarrassing thing that you did yesterday or in the third grade if that's what's itching at you. You just have to own what happened to you because it happened to you and then you brush it off because honestly no one else in the world cares as much as you do. So that should actually feel really good to you. It might sound really selfish or self-centered but honestly that's a good thing. You may have spilled that ketchup but listen, no one is going to remember for as long as you will. So even if someone noticed it's okay and honestly you should be able to feel really relaxed in that fact that it doesn't actually matter and if that doesn't feel good I don't know what does because that's very relieving to me honestly. I have a question. Have you ever experienced a spot that is a really stupid question? You have obviously experienced a spotlight effect. I want you to tell me what happened and how you dealt with it. I would love to hear it in the comments below. Please let me know. If you liked this video and you want to see more like it please press the like button and I will be sure to make some more for you. Please subscribe to the channel you will see all sorts of videos about psychology by all sorts of people including moi. So if you would like to see more of those press the red subscribe button below. You can also follow Psych2Go on its social media like Twitter and Tumblr and all of those links will be below for you to see. If you would like to read the original article by Jenny Kang the link will also be below. You can also follow me on my social media and I'm getting my own YouTube channel started. All of the links will be below. Everything is below. Just hit the expand button on the description and it will all be okay I promise. If something is missing leave a comment and we will get it to you. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you next time. Bye. Have a great week. Mwah!