You’re Too Focused on What You’re Focused On

The New York Times:

Here’s some good news for self-conscious people. That coffee stain on your shirt, those mismatched earrings you absent-mindedly selected this morning, that unfortunate haircut you just got — people do not notice those things as much as you think.

Although it can feel as if your flaws and missteps are the focus of everyone’s attention, research in social psychology suggests otherwise. In a classic study from the 1990s, for example, participants put on a shirt emblazoned with the face of the singer Barry Manilow and then walked into a room full of people. Later, when asked how many people in the room would be able to identify what was on their shirt, the participants significantly overestimated: It turned out that only half the number of people noticed as they had thought.

Read the whole story: The New York Times