I’m reading :59 seconds at the moment, by Prof Richard Wiseman. Despite the name, it’s not an action-thriller, with the rugged hero fighting to save the world in less than a minute… James Bond style. Instead, it’s about the things you can do which make life better (for yourself) in short, sharp bursts. Amongst other things it debunks some of the common self-help myths by pointing out that they’re actually not based upon any scientific research. (See here for ranting about an example of where research is mis-used but a quick Google search on “7% myth communication†will give you a couple of days reading!).
As a performer and then a trainer, I know that mistakes happen and that (usually) they’re not as obvious to the audience as they are to the performer who makes them. Okay, as a theatre technician I’ve made some boobs such as playing the wrong music for a dance, and there was no way anyone could have not known about that one, but you know what I mean…
Wiseman’s book provides some convenient supporting evidence for that experience.
In a short section about they “Spotlight effect†he describes an experiment performed on students at Cornell University by Thomas Gilovich. He established that the students at Cornell, in general, wouldn’t be seen dead wearing a Barry Manilow T-shirt and then made a late-comer to meeting wear one. Cruel and un-natural punishment indeed!
After a couple of minutes the late-comer was taken back out of the room and asked to guess how many of the other students had noticed the Manilow T-shirt. Their guess was that about half of the people around them spotted their humiliation! However, when the other people in the meeting were asked to confirm this, it turned out that only about 20% of them noticed anything.
In other words, you feel worse than it looks to other people!S
