The spotlight effect and the illusion of transparency in social anxiety

The effect of Regulation FD on the properties of management earnings forecasts

“…Vorauer and Ross (1999) report that experimental participants report stronger feelings of transparency in high 'social-evaluative' conditions. Brown and Stopa (2007) argue that public scrutiny is ''likely critical'' in invoking feelings of social anxiety, such as being 'in the spotlight'.…”

The effects of social evaluation and looming threat on self-attentional biases and social anxiety

“…However, such cognitive activities appear to be maladaptive among people with social anxiety in that the elevated self attention often leads to increased negative self-views, anxiety symptoms, and impaired performance (Clark & Wells, 1995;Perowne & Mansell, 2002;Woody, 1996;Woody & Rodriguez, 2000). As in Brown and Stopa (2007), the current study uses two concepts derived from social psychology to explain the possible attentional biases in social anxiety: the illusion of transparency and the spotlight effect. The illusion of transparency refers to the tendency for people to overestimate how apparent their internal sensations are to others (Gilovich, Savitsky, & Medvec, 1998) whereas the spotlight effect refers to the tendency for people to believe that their behaviors are more likely to be noted and remembered by others than is actually the case (Gilovich, Kruger, & Medvec, 2002;Gilovich, Medvec, & Savitsky, 2000).…”

“…The illusion of transparency focuses on internal selfattention whereas the spotlight effect focuses on external selfattention. Internal self-attention is directed to the self with a focus on one's thoughts and feelings whereas external self-attention is associated with how individuals view themselves from the perspective of the observer (Brown & Stopa, 2007;Woody & Rodriguez, 2000). To the best of our knowledge, only one study (Brown & Stopa, 2007) had examined the role of the illusion of transparency and the spotlight effect in the context of social anxiety.…”

“…Internal self-attention is directed to the self with a focus on one's thoughts and feelings whereas external self-attention is associated with how individuals view themselves from the perspective of the observer (Brown & Stopa, 2007;Woody & Rodriguez, 2000). To the best of our knowledge, only one study (Brown & Stopa, 2007) had examined the role of the illusion of transparency and the spotlight effect in the context of social anxiety. Specifically, those authors found that socially anxious individuals reported high levels of the spotlight effect (but not the illusion of transparency effect) and performance deficits when they thought that they would be socially evaluated.…”

Which Cognitive Biases can Exacerbate our Workload?

“…• Individuals delay their evaluation of an event by a month or so (Geng et al, 2013) The just world fallacy • People experience a positive mood (Goldenberg & Forgas, 2012); specifically, when individuals experience a positive mood, they are not as likely to blame victims Spotlight effect • Individuals do not feel like they will be evaluated, or at least not harshly, by anyone else (Brown & Stopa, 2007) meaning. Indeed, they skew their attention, memory, or appraisals to evoke thoughts that foster meaning .…”