The Talk Show with Spence

The History of the Undead Phenomenon, with Guests Dr. Kenneth Briant, Gladys Crust, and Joseph "Sloppy Joe" Santino

The Spotlight Effect

 Brought to you by:

http://imgsrv.whli.com/image/whli/UserFiles/Image/barry-manilow1.jpg

There was an experiment conducted in early 2000, wherein several students at a college were required to wear a T-shirt with an embarrassing photo of Barry Manilow incredibly visible on the front. The students were then asked to predict how many people in the room could remember what the image on the front of the embarrassing shirt was. Here’s a chart of the results:

Also attribution of the experiment:

http://psych-your-mind.blogspot.com/2011/08/spotlight-effect-youre-only-one-who.html

On the left is the embarrassing shirt (large Manilow face), and on the right is simply a T-shirt with a face (Martin Luther King Jr). Notice that each time, the actual number of people paying attention is drastically less than those who actually do. 

This is called the “Spotlight Effect”.  It’s the idea that, basically, you’re the only one that notices when you’re embarrassed. In long, when you are feeling nervous, think that you’re messing up totally, stumbling over your own words and sweating an ocean of shame, everyone else simply sees you standing there.  In short, nobody cares and nobody ever will.  As I’m sure you’re all aware, most public speaking anxiety is all in one’s head. 

Thomas Gilovich (the conductor of the Manilow experiment) suggested that this is because we are incredibly aware of our own actions, and feel that others must also be aware of them.  This puts a spotlight on our own heads; a spotlight that no one else can see.  When someone says they hate public speaking, I doubt that they’ve ever been booed off of a stage of hit with a rotten tomato.  However, in our minds, there are tomatoes flying everywhere.  Don’t throw hypothetical tomatoes at yourself folks. 

Leave your hypothetical tomatoes at home.

Picture #1

Photo from stephaniecowell.com

I feel as though this title I've chosen for my blog requires some explanation, and so I'll use this first picture to do that. Of course, at the end, I'll have to tie it back in to define an aspect of my worldview or personality, but we'll get to that I'm sure. Assuming you're reading this after I've changed the title from the quite dapper and adequately sane "Superturtle Pantaloon", it is now called Conscience and Consciousness. Aside from sounding like a rejected Jane Austen novel, those two words are very important concepts to me. They are also two words that have been taken to mean several things over time, so here their definitions:

Conscience- An inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior.

Consciousness- The state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings, the awareness or perception of something.

If the idea of conscience is your reaction to the world around you, based upon your past experiences, and consciousness is your reality (or your perception, if you believe those two words to be interchangeable, as I do), then are Conscience and Consciousness not the basis of every experience we've ever had? And when you think about it, is life not but one interaction, between yourself and the world around you? I'm not sure  myself, and perhaps that picture up there is supposed to portray this pondering uncertainty: The empty chair representing something unnatural, unsure of its place, its existence only validated by the people who interact with it.

I have no idea, but this picture is supposed to portray that I like trees.

Picture #2

Picture from lchfwilliam.blogspot.com

I like books. I like movies and music. I like short awkward sentences.

This Albert Camus' "The Stranger": A book that doesn't have any significance to me at the moment, but happened to be the book I am paying most attention to at the moment. It also brings up an important point: The reason I enjoy these types of art is that I like the sharing of ideas. Keep in mind that I am not just talking about books or screenplays; I find music to often be the best way to communicate things.  This is mostly because of its ability to transcend words and yet still make you feel something. I still don't know how it works, and that's probably why I like it so much.

To me, there is nothing greater than open-minded people sharing new ideas and improving old ones; besides possibly pumpkin pie. Why do we seem to think that is only a seasonal dish?  I don't know who was on the committee that decided that, but it certainly wasn't me.

Picture #3

 

Picture from apod.nasa.gov.

I enjoy looking at stars for several reasons. Mostly, for perspective. This third picture is of the Tarantula Nebula. Every one of those little dots you can see is a star, not at all unlike our own sun. Those solid, gaseous looking arms are even more stars; apparently too dense to even tell apart. When you look up at the stars, you are looking at a galaxy from the inside. There are millions of stars in the Milky Way, and billions of galaxies in the universe. If you were to look at our galaxy, from the distance you are now viewing this nebula, the Earth would be so small as to appear invisible. When you consider that you, one average human, are roughly 1.26 sextillion times smaller than Earth, it gives you some perspective as to how infinitesimally tiny you are. Whenever you have a problem, like if your girlfriend forgot to text you or you missed the first 10 minutes of Secret Life, remember that in the grand scheme of the universe, nothing you do means anything to anything.

Have a terrific day.

Picture #4

 

Picture from examiner.com

For my final picture, I chose the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. This is both because of my aforementioned enjoyment of words and books, and also because it is the best thing I could find to define "me".  I'm not really a fan of trying to define myself, or anyone, by what their hobbies are or what interests them in high school.  Not to say that the things I like don’t reflect my personality, only that the things I like don’t define it.  I suppose I'm not really sure how I would define myself.  Misters Merriam and Webster say it's "that identical one that is I". 

I'm not really sure what that means, but I intend to find out. From my limited exposure to life, I have come to the conclusion that it is less about what you do know, and more about what you don't. However, it is the desire to learn, to define things, and to find those answers, that makes it okay. I've been thinking that in the end, that's what it comes down to: The awareness of oneself that inspires your interactions, and how your reactions to those interactions form everything that comes afterwards. That's what it's all about: Conscience and Consciousness.


I deeply apologize for how cheesy that was.