Introducing the Invisibility Cloak Illusion: We think we ’re more observant (and less observed) than everyone else

By guest blogger Juliet Hodges Most of us tend to think we’re better than average: more competent, honest, talented and compassionate. The latest example of this kind of optimistic self-perception is the “invisibility cloak illusion”. In research published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Erica Boothby and her colleagues show how we have a tendency to believe that we are incredibly socially observant ourselves, while those around us are less so. These assumptions combine to create the illusion that we observe others more than they observe us. As a first step, the researchers asked participants on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk survey website how much they usually observe other people. Participants indicated that they were more observant of others than they expected the average person to be, whilst they believed they were observed less than other people. Next the researchers asked students about their experience immediately after lunch in a university canteen. Participants rated themselves almost twice as observant of strangers in the canteen, as these other people were of them. When participants had been dining with friends, they said they had noticed more about their friends than their friends had of them. They also indicated that, when accidentally making eye contact with someone, they felt it was because they were already watching that person – not because they themselves were being watched. While this provides initial support for the inv...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Social Source Type: blogs