In high school, I was a Cheerleader and during halftime we would perform in front of everyone and one year I was performing my routine tumbling pass and slipped on the floor where water had been split. I was beyond embarrassed I felt like every eye in the gym was on me and laughing at the fact that I had just face planted. Everyone insured me that no one saw me fall but I didn’t believe them. In reality, there really wasn’t but maybe a handful of people that noticed I had fallen and I never fully understood why I was so upset and embarrassed by the incident until after taking this course.
Social psychology can be defined as “the scientific study of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of individuals in social situations” (Chapter 1. Pg. 6). In that gym, I was placed in a social situation where my feelings and thoughts were stricken by embarrassment because my mind made me believe that I was stuck out like a sore thumb and all eyes were on me and laughing at the fact that I had just face planted. This type of situation can be defined as the Spotlight Effect were “people’s conviction that other people are attending to them—to their appearance and behavior– more than is actually the case” (Chapter 14. Pg. 554).
According to Arlin Cuncic, social anxiety can be linked to the Spotlight Effect because of your lack of ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to realize that their perspective is different from your own. Someone who has social anxiety is overly affected by the Spotlight effect because they are “focused on themselves, their appearance, and believes that everyone around them is just as aware”(Cuncic. A. 2018.What Is The Spotlight Effect?).
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Your own self-consciousness is the degee of which you are focused on yourself and how much others are focused on you( Chapter 14. Pg. 554) and can also be associated with the spotlight effect and the “typical level of self-consciousness, at least when other people are around, is fairly high”(chapter 14. Pg. 554) causing you to be on higher alert with your emotions. I think the combination of my self-consciousness, and the spotlight effect really made my moment of embarrassment more embarrassing than it actually was.
I was worried more about what others had seen or thought of me and let my own mind take control of my thoughts and feelings about myself. Being a memember of the cheer team gave me a soical identity and a high self-esteem about myself and I was proud to be apart of that social group. According to Saul McLeod, the Soical Identity Theory’s main hypothesis is that the “in-group( cheer team) will seek to find negative aspects of an out-group (the crowd) to enhance their own self-image” (McLeod. S. 2008. Social Identity Theory).
Which was what I did to keep a positive self image after messing up in the routin. I made my self feel better about what happened by telling myself that no matter what happened most of the people didn’t notice and for those who did, they couldn’t even try to do the things I was able to do as a cheerleader and that I had no reason to feel embrassed anymore. With the help of this course I was able to break down my own personal soical psychology experience and better understand what happened and why.
