The summer before starting university can be a time of multiple worries for students. Worry about obtaining a place on your desired course. Worry about navigating clearing to confirm your place. Worries about securing accommodation, sorting student finance, preparation for academic studies and even finding the right stationery are also common.

Yet many students’ biggest concern is social in nature: “will I make friends?”. Surveys consistently suggest that loneliness and belonging are major concerns for new students starting university. This challenge isn’t unique to shy or socially anxious students. Most freshers experience worries about fitting in and making connections when starting university, especially when others make it seem so easy.

Something I find in my research with colleagues is how poor we are at estimating others’ beliefs, feelings and behaviour. We also overestimate how much other people notice our own behaviour and any social missteps.

In social psychology, there are two related psychological biases that can explain this pattern. First, the “spotlight effect” explains how we wrongly assume that other people are paying attention to our behaviour. Psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Kenneth Savitsky, who have studied this effect, state that people assume the “social spotlight” shines more brightly on themselves than it actually does.

The other bias, the “illusion of transparency”, explains how people........

© The Conversation