Noticing future me: Reducing egocentrism through mental imagery
Macrae and colleagues' 2016 paper asked whether the spotlight effect can be reduced. Across three experiments on a future-oriented version of the bias, imagining a far-future event reduced spotlighting, and viewing an upcoming event from a third-person perspective reduced both spotlighting and embarrassment. The authors conclude that simple shifts in visual perspective may reduce the sense of being personally salient. The manuscript also describes the 2000 experiments, which is where the fifteen-minute variation is taken from.
Macrae and colleagues' 2016 paper asked whether the spotlight effect can be reduced. Across three experiments on a future-oriented version of the bias, imagining a far-future event reduced spotlighting, and viewing an upcoming event from a third-person perspective reduced both spotlighting and embarrassment. The authors conclude that simple shifts in visual perspective may reduce the sense of being personally salient. The manuscript also describes the 2000 experiments, which is where the fifteen-minute variation is taken from.
Written from the publisher-linked university record (authors, journal, abstract summary) and the manuscript version, read 2026-11-01.
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Macrae, C. N., Mitchell, J. P., McNamara, D. L., Golubickis, M., Andreou, K., Moller, S., Peytcheva, K., Falben, J. K., & Christian, B. M. (2016). Noticing future me: Reducing egocentrism through mental imagery. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(7), 855-863. doi:10.1177/0146167216644961 https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216644961