Why People Are So Self-Conscious

Humans are self-conscious creatures.

If you’ve ever accidentally worn mismatching socks, or woken up with a pimple you can’t hide, or worn an outfit that defies your usual wardrobe style, you have probably felt it. That sense that everyone is looking at you; judging your appearance or noticing that flaw.

By the time you get home, you may have convinced yourself that your socks or pimple or slight alteration of appearance is the talk of the town.

Surely everyone in the office noticed as soon as you got to work in the morning.

The thing is... they probably didn’t.

The Spotlight Effect

Everyone is the hero of their own story. We are, quite literally, the centre of our universes: Every moment of our individual human experience has us in it.

It’s likely because of this natural human egocentricity that we overestimate the level of notice or care others give to our behaviour and appearance.

This tendency is known as the spotlight effect.

As part of one study, participants were asked to wear a T-shirt with Barry Manilow’s face on it. (This had been assessed as a sufficiently ‘embarrassing’ piece of clothing for the demographic).

Afterwards, they were asked how many other people they thought noticed what (who) was on their shirt. The researchers also checked with observers to see how many of them actually did.

The average estimate of the Manilow wearer was double the accuracy rate of the observers.

In other words, when you’re convinced something about your appearance or behaviour is obviously going to be noticed or scrutinised by others, you’re probably vastly overestimating just how much attention people are paying.

When we’re walking around thinking about what others will notice or think about us, there’s a chance those people are also walking around thinking about what others will notice about them.

At the most extreme scale, we could all end up a bunch of egotistical human bubbles, bobbling around being self-conscious and self-centric and occasionally bumping into other bubbles along the way.

(I jest, we humans are alright.)

In an evolutionary sense, a somewhat egocentric nature seems logical. If early humans didn’t spend time thinking about themselves, well, there’d probably not be later ones. You need to be self-conscious to assess risks, to minimise danger, and to make choices that promote survival. We crave acceptance for survival, too, because early humans needed to work together to ward off predators and other threats. It's just a shame our instincts are now also applied to, say, whether that customer noticed the lipstick on our teeth this morning.

Illusions of Transparency

Connected to the spotlight effect is the illusion of transparency.

Suppose we’re about to do a public speech or some other activity with an audience. In that case, we presume our nerves are more evident than they are: That people can see our heartbeat speeding up, feel the frantic energy emanating from our body, and notice the slight tremble of our hands as we begin to speak.

If we’re lying, the lie is so clear to us that we expect others will be more likely to detect it than they are.

If we’re negotiating with someone, we might think the other party can read us like a book – that they can tell what we're thinking and what move we'll make next.

And while it’s always good, for example, to be conscious of our facial expressions in a negotiation, usually our inner thoughts and states aren’t leaking out to the world as much as we think they are.

In one study, public speakers vastly overestimated how obvious their nerves were to the audience. When they were aware of the illusion of transparency, though, they performed better – in both their own opinion and from the perspective of the audience.

Just knowing that people are probably not observing as much as we think they are can help us to perform more confidently. Which leads to the next point.

Takeaways

1. No one cares or notices as much as you think they do.

There’s an incredibly liberating element to this research.

When you’re worried about how others are perceiving you, that energy is misplaced. (Of course, we shouldn’t be overly concerned about what people think of us anyway, but that one's a bigger journey.)

The reality is that people are paying less attention than we intuitively think they are. People are, just like us, thinking about their own story more than others. And this creates freedom.

It's much easier to be confident here. This freedom gives us permission to focus on what we want to do, to take chances and risks, and make choices with less fear clouding our judgement.

It urges us to put our hand up for that presentation even if we’re nervous about it, and to focus on the quality of our work rather than the fact that we forgot to iron our shirt for today and surely everyone is looking at it.

It’s a gateway to more vulnerability and authenticity in creative work, and to more “let’s give this a go” in business.

If you’re restricting yourself because you’re worried about what others will think, whether it’s something small like changing your hair or something big like putting out a vulnerable creative project or changing your career, you can rest assured that most people won’t care about or notice your missteps as much as you expect. And maybe this frame can help us make more independent decisions based on our own, authentic values and desires. Maybe it can encourage us, in some small way, to make that big leap we've been considering for a long time.

As Dr Seuss says, “Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

2. Serving others

These ideas are also relevant to sales, marketing, management and negotiation.

There is an old saying in the sales world that every customer is, throughout your entire interaction, wondering to themselves, “What’s in it for me?”

In recognising this, we can get better outcomes.

Instead of only telling a customer what’s great about your product, consider how it will benefit them specifically. Think about their situation, ask questions to uncover what they want and need. Don’t make assumptions based on what you care about, and don’t be afraid to literally ask, ‘what is important for you in a new [product]?’

In negotiation, instead of negotiating with only your interests in mind, plan out what you expect the other party will care most about and clarify their interests during the negotiation. Sometimes in a negotiation, you can make a smaller concession of something the other party really wants, instead of a larger concession they don’t consider as important – and end up with a better outcome for everyone.

We’re all the hero of our own story. We’re all going to assess situations with a default lens of how they relate to us. If we connect with that in professional interactions, we’ll not only find it easier to empathise and build relationships, but get better outcomes, too.

This piece originally appeared in my newsletter. If you’d like to subscribe for a weekly dose of human behaviour, psychology, and a sprinkling of philosophy, sign up here.