Notes

These notes give the sources behind the claims in each chapter, and say where I'm giving my own interpretation. The book isn't medical or psychological advice. If feeling watched is affecting your everyday life, a GP or an NHS talking therapies service is the place to go. The examples throughout, the café with the window table, the walk to the bar, the meeting with the rehearsed sentence, the kerb by the bus stop, the jumper with the mark, the gym, the haircut, and Dan at the Italian place, are invented to illustrate and aren't drawn from real people.

Studies were checked on 26 September 2026 by reading their published abstracts. None was read in full today, and none carried a retraction or correction notice at that date. Most of the research here was done with university students in the United States, and it describes averages across groups, not what any one person in any one room will think.

Chapter 1. No sources. The terms are the book's own.

Chapter 3. Gilovich, Medvec and Savitsky, "The spotlight effect in social judgment: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one's own actions and appearance", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, 2000, pages 211 to 222. The figures of about forty-six per cent predicted and twenty-three per cent actual come from an earlier book in this series, You knew the answer, which read the paper in full. They weren't re-read for this book. The claim about the headcount being attention scaled down is my description of the authors' anchoring-and-adjustment account.

Chapter 4. Gilovich, Medvec and Savitsky, as above, study 3. The description of what the other people in a meeting are doing is mine.

Chapter 5. Levin, Simons, Angelone and Chabris, "Memory for centrally attended changing objects in an incidental real-world change detection paradigm", British Journal of Psychology 93, 2002, pages 289 to 302. The original 1998 study by Simons and Levin isn't cited because I couldn't verify it directly. The extension from a conversation partner to a person at the next table is mine.

Chapter 6. Savitsky, Epley and Gilovich, "Do others judge us as harshly as we think? Overestimating the impact of our failures, shortcomings, and mishaps", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, 2001, pages 44 to 56. Also used in earlier books in this series for a different point. Epley, Savitsky and Gilovich, "Empathy neglect: reconciling the spotlight effect and the correspondence bias", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83, 2002, pages 300 to 312. The earlier book referred to is It wasn't about you.

Chapter 7. Boothby, Clark and Bargh, "The invisibility cloak illusion: people (incorrectly) believe they observe others more than others observe them", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 112, 2017, pages 589 to 606. Six studies. The recall exercise is mine.

Chapter 8. Gilovich, Savitsky and Medvec, "The illusion of transparency: biased assessments of others' ability to read one's emotional states", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75, 1998, pages 332 to 346. Also used in Go anyway and They can't read your mind. Mansell and Clark, "How do I appear to others? Social anxiety and processing of the observable self", Behaviour Research and Therapy 37, 1999, pages 419 to 434. The finding about using bodily sensations is from correlations in the abstract, in people high in social anxiety. The numb lip is mine.

Chapter 9. Epley, Keysar, Van Boven and Gilovich, "Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87, 2004, pages 327 to 339. Boothby, Clark and Bargh, as above, study 6. Gilovich, Kruger and Medvec, "The spotlight effect revisited: overestimating the manifest variability of our actions and appearance", Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38, 2002, pages 93 to 99, is named by title only, because no abstract was available to me.

Chapter 10. Boothby, Cooney, Sandstrom and Clark, "The liking gap in conversations: do people like us more than we think?", Psychological Science 29, 2018, pages 1742 to 1756. Also used in Ring them first. The extension from conversations to a glance across a café is mine and is said to be.

Chapter 11. Ratner and Hamilton, "Inhibited from bowling alone", Journal of Consumer Research 42, 2015. The participants were making consumer choices, and the extension to the reader's café is mine. Dan is invented.

Chapter 12. No new sources. The claim that the spotlight effect is general rather than a trait is my reading of the samples in Gilovich, Medvec and Savitsky 2000, and the account of confidence as attention is mine. The earlier book referred to is You wouldn't say it to a friend.

Chapter 13. Spurr and Stopa, "Self-focused attention in social phobia and social anxiety", Clinical Psychology Review 22, 2002, pages 947 to 975, a review of the Clark and Wells model and the evidence around it. Bögels and Mansell, "Attention processes in the maintenance and treatment of social phobia: hypervigilance, avoidance and self-focused attention", Clinical Psychology Review 24, 2004, pages 827 to 856. Both reviews concern social phobia and high social anxiety, and the application to the ordinary reader is mine.

Chapter 14. Spurr and Stopa, as above, for the self-image built from inside. The account of what the run-up does is my interpretation.

Chapter 15. Savitsky, Epley and Gilovich, as above. The description of the sting as a second run of the beam is mine. The earlier book referred to is It's already over.

Chapter 16. No research sources. The costs are my observations.

Chapter 17. Spurr and Stopa, as above. Mansell and Clark, as above, for underestimating how well one comes across, from correlations. The claim that self-focus reads as distance is my interpretation.

Chapter 18. Boothby, Clark and Bargh, as above. The earlier book referred to is Look up. The café from the ceiling is invented.

Chapters 19 to 21. No research sources beyond those already given. The methods are my suggestions and haven't been tested as a package. Ratner and Hamilton, as above, for the enjoyment check in chapter 21.

Chapter 22. Gollwitzer and Sheeran, "Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes", Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38, 2006, pages 69 to 119, for the when-then form. Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts and Wardle, "How are habits formed: modelling habit formation in the real world", European Journal of Social Psychology 40, 2010, pages 998 to 1009. 96 volunteers, 82 with usable data. What I say to expect is my expectation.

Chapter 23. The NHS page on social anxiety, at nhs.uk, read on 26 September 2026, for the symptom list, the advice to see a GP and the self-referral to talking therapies. Changing Faces is named as a charity for people with a visible difference. Its website couldn't be read for this book and nothing is claimed about its services. The earlier books referred to are You only saw the good bits and Go anyway.

Chapter 24. Lally and colleagues, as above. The extension from a missed day to a bad week is mine.

Looked up and not used. Vorauer and Ross, "Self-awareness and feeling transparent", Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 35, 1999, had no abstract available to me and isn't cited. Simons and Levin's 1998 door study couldn't be verified directly and is represented by the 2002 paper. Gilovich, Kruger and Medvec 2002 is named by title in chapter 9 and no finding from it is reported.