The Social Spotlight Increases Blindness to Change Blindness

The results of research on change blindness and the spotlight effect suggest that (a) others are unlikely to notice changes in our appearance and (b) we are likely to overestimate the extent to which others notice changes in our appearance. However, little research has directly addressed the latter possibility. In Study 1, target persons overestimated the extent to which observers noticed a change in their sweatshirt. In Study 2, observers who followed the target persons throughout the study overestimated the extent to which other observers noticed the change in the target persons' sweatshirt, but target persons' overestimations were significantly higher. The results suggest that the spotlight effect increases blindness to change blindness.