The spotlight effect in social judgment: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one's own actions and appearance.

@article{Gilovich2000TheSE,
  title={The spotlight effect in social judgment: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one's own actions and appearance.},
  author={Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Husted Medvec and Kenneth Savitsky},
  journal={Journal of personality and social psychology},
  year={2000},
  volume={78 2},
  pages={
          211-22
        }
}
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… Expand
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Results help to explain why actors can overestimate the strength of observers' dispositional inferences even when, as the literature on the correspondence bias attests, observers are notoriously prone to drawing those very inferences. Expand
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