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Spotlight effect, also known as spotlight effect. It is a psychological concept put forward by Jilovich and Savisky. It means that we always unconsciously enlarge our problems. For example, when making a fool of ourselves, we always feel that others will look at us and pay attention to us, but in fact, others may not notice us at all.

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The spotlight effect is simply that we always overestimate the attention of others.

It can also be said that we care too much about other people's views or impressions of us, which leads us to care too much about other people's attention to us.

1999 Tom Gilovic, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, and Kenneth Savisky, an American psychologist, conducted an experiment on "spotlight effect":

They asked to wear short sleeves and the head of an angry singer and walked into a room where there were already five people. The researchers first asked the subjects who wore short sleeves and asked how many people they thought would notice their clothes. Then ask the subjects in the room if they have noticed the heads on the short sleeves.

The results showed that more than 50% of the subjects wearing short sleeves thought they noticed his clothes, but only 10% of the subjects in the room noticed the head wearing short sleeves.

The researchers also came to the conclusion that people care too much about things related to themselves and think that others' eyes will focus on themselves.

Everyone is surrounded by countless stimuli every day, from subatomic particles to the distant Milky Way, from barking dogs, noisy children, bunches of sunshine, jumping cursors on the screen, harsh bosses, a long list of chores, sore feet, potential customers, yellow roses, vibrating mobile phones to expectant audiences, not to mention all kinds of social software and the whole social media world.

Every waking second of every day, these things are competing to attract people's attention.

According to a neuroscientist, "if we want to process all the information around us, our brain must become bigger than a building, and even that is not enough."

Fortunately, evolution provides us with a quite effective alternative solution-the brain only processes a small part of information.

Maybe you think you can accurately observe the world around you, but in fact, your perception is constantly screened and adjusted by a series of cognitive processes involving multiple neural circuits. The facts you realize actually contain only a tiny part of information.

This is because the brain has evolved to only provide people with information that the subconscious thinks they need to survive, or deliberately select some information from the mountain of possibilities, and then let the neural circuit edit those foreign details, otherwise the brain will be overloaded.

Attention is the center of the process of filtering information, similar to the director's position in filming. Attention determines which perceptions will be focused and which will be given priority.

Or, as william james wrote in the book Principles of Psychology: "Attention is the result of several objects or ideas that may appear at the same time and occupy the brain in a clear and vivid form."

However, it seems that these objects and ideas are not produced at the same time, and their real-time competition for brain attention is absolutely endless.

This means that even the most insightful and observant people will miss the information that appears in front of them. This is how magicians make a living.

However, attention is an elastic miracle, just as a photographer can narrow the focus to the limit of perception by using close-ups

A grain of sand? Do you have a sharp pain on one side of your body? Fragments of melon seeds stuck in your teeth? No problem at all.

In fact, for most people, the smaller the goal, the less coherent it is, and the easier it is to become the focus. When the focus is relatively narrower and smaller, people's attention is easier to maintain, even when they are engaged in more automated activities such as walking.

However, once you expand the spotlight of attention, you will find it more difficult to maintain the stability of attention.

Imagine a theater with all the lights on. The stage was crowded with actors in costumes. Everyone is busy setting up props, shaking hands and pretending to talk to each other. Just then, a mobile phone rang under the stage, the red exit light began to flash, and then the tour guide arranged a woman in a big feather hat in the seat in front of you ... where should you look? What should I pay attention to? How do you know what is important?

Chances are, under the expanded spotlight, you can either choose something you are interested in or choose a series of outstanding images with some common features. For example, you may see two women wearing bright red and black dresses on the stage at the same time, but other scenes are out of focus.

Now, imagine that the theater lights are dim, the stage lights are dim, and the spotlight only hits the actors singing on the right side of the stage. Where should you look? How has your attention span changed?

If you are like most people, your eyes and attention will fly directly to the center of this spotlight.

In daily life, whenever you enter a new "scene", a similar process will happen even if there is no stage lighting.

For example, you can't remember all the details of the company's annual meeting as soon as you walk into the conference room, so your brain will naturally scan quickly and then narrow the spotlight to a more comfortable range.

That range makes you focus on the central CEO of the spotlight in your mind, while people and things on the edge fade out of your focus, and everything outside the spotlight becomes blank.

Then, your attention will selectively move its spotlight around, suddenly shining on the clock in the corner, suddenly shining on the pen knocked by the chairman on the table, and suddenly turning to the person who is speaking, while the faces of other people on the table and the documents and data being discussed will become blurred.

The spotlight effect is reflected in all kinds of things related to the mind. If you have ever talked to someone who is absorbed in reading, you will know that attention can make people turn a blind eye to everything around them. People focus on what occupies their attention, and more or less they will become less concerned about the sounds around them.

Highly selective attention focused on reading is called top-down attention by neuroscientists because it is triggered by conscious thoughts in the brain.

The more people try to concentrate consciously, the more neurons in the cerebral cortex will be activated and respond to stimuli, but at the same time, neurons in the surrounding areas will be strongly inhibited.

It's like the brain encodes all the competitive information into irrelevant information and closes the door to prohibit others from entering.

This inhibition enhances the spotlight effect and dulls or disappears unconscious or bottom-up attention, which will respond to unexpected sights, sounds, tastes and other signals from the body's sensory system.

In any case, there will always be some bottom-up concerns. Like someone patting you on the shoulder. Even if you are absorbed in reading a book or an article, you will still look up and all your attention will turn to the source of the slap.

The stronger and longer the stimulus, such as a gunshot, a scream or a flash of light, the more likely it is to interfere with top-down attention.

However, there is no chance to get more subtle or distant signals. This is why the magician tries to keep the racket-throwing quiet and unobtrusive, because only in this way can he not interfere with the audience's top-down attention.

At the same time, the magician will try to improve the visual focus of the audience from top to bottom. The magician will give the audience instructions: "Look at my hand carefully."

Just like the slogan in the movie thieves, "The closer you get, the less you see", they know this very well. This is because the harder you stare at something, the more you will miss the things around the spotlight, and the secret activities actually take place there.

All these explain why many traffic accidents are related to mobile phones. Believe it or not, the mechanism of human attention makes it difficult for us to perform multiple tasks at the same time.

When desire or distraction makes it impossible to choose a stimulus, attention may alternate in turn, but the spotlight will not be easily divided into several beams. Even if you use hands-free, drivers who text or make phone calls while driving tend to concentrate on the conversation and let the road conditions "win" their attention.

In this way, these drivers will slow down the speed of detecting road conditions, slow down the response to obstacles, and reduce the control of vehicle speed, lane positioning and forward speed.

Studies have found that these drivers' attention damage is even more serious than that of drunk drivers.

If a child rushes to the road and runs about 10 meter in front of your car, unless your attention is not distracted and relaxed enough to concentrate, a traffic accident is bound to happen.

Another way to achieve relaxation level is attention control training. Magicians know this, which is why we have to practice an action thousands of times until it becomes an instinctive reaction.

Taylor, the famous magician mentioned earlier, likes telling stories. One day, he performed the magic of cups and balls in a restaurant in the Midwest of America. As a result, a ball was out of control, and in an instant he was distracted, even unaware that his empty hand was still putting other balls under the cup.

Similarly, it is said that some well-trained Morse code senders can talk to others while cracking information codes.

Scientists call it over-learning, that is, mastering a skill so thoroughly that it almost becomes an automatic behavior. However, people who are overconfident should pay attention to the fact that if drivers send text messages while driving, it will inevitably increase the possibility of traffic accidents.

Another kind of attention that magicians use without restriction is shared attention, which is a common form of attention caused by eye movements and body language.

Humans naturally share attention. For example, if an adult is paying attention to someone in the room, all the babies present will pay attention to that person instead. This reflection can promote interpersonal communication, just like an invisible social organizer.

In social interaction, the signal of controlling shared attention is very subtle, and it is difficult to describe this process as voluntary or involuntary.

Have you ever felt that you just took a look in the rearview mirror and suddenly felt that you were being followed because the line of sight was just in line with the line of sight cast by the driver behind you?

Conscious and subconscious attention usually work together, but this cooperation is particularly obvious in sharing attention.

All the magician has to do is turn his eyes to the left, and then, like magic, all the audience will move their attention frames to see what the magician is looking at.

Daniel Lubetzki, CEO of Condi Snack Food Company, used to be a "magician". He found that sharing attention was especially useful for * *.

"No matter where you look, employees will look and learn how to guide employees' emotions and motives. This is a very useful tool for magicians. "In this sense, staring is like a shortcut to the soul.

Gaze can also be a window to the soul. Some researchers pointed out that people tend to stare at their favorite options for a long time, which prompted Pizza Hut to launch the first subconscious menu in Britain in 20 14.

Consumers only need to look at photos of menu options on tablets, and then eye tracking software will help them order. However, if the prediction of the software is wrong, another button will be provided on the computer at the same time to let the consumer change the meal ordered.

On the other hand, a study published on 20 15 proves that eye movements can be used to manipulate others.

In this study, subjects were asked some serious moral questions, such as "Is murder justified?" Then put two plates with "yes" and "no" together and present them to them.

The researchers found that when asked to give an answer immediately, 58% people would choose whatever answer they aimed at. By asking the subjects to give their answers within a certain line of sight within a limited time, the questioner can influence their answers.

According to one of the authors of this study, "the process of making moral decisions is reflected in our eyes. However, when making a decision, where our eyes stay will also affect our choice. "