Is Main-Character Syndrome Stressing You Out?

When someone sends you a request that demands a response, how quickly do you feel you have to reply? How about an email or group text exchange in which people wish each other well, say goodbye, say hello, or just talk about the weather? Do you fear that failing to join in the fray will label you as a slacker, someone who doesn’t care about others, or just plain rude?

The New York Times opinion writer Erica Dhawan, in a February 2022 op-ed, suggests that the culprit behind your need to jump in as quickly as possible to any of these situations is one symptom of “main-character syndrome.” When she becomes stressed out by the demand for a response, she states, “I’ve found that it forces me to confront my own main-character syndrome — the idea that we all play a starring role in the movie that is our life, with everyone else merely the supporting cast.” Do you think this is your problem, too?

Dhawan cites prior research on the opposite of providing quick (or any) responses, or “ghosting,” in her analysis of the problem. However, a 2021 study, published by Laura Giurge of London Business School and Vanessa Bohns of Cornell University, goes straight to the heart of understanding how main-character syndrome feeds the rush to reply.

Egocentrism and the Main-Character Syndrome

The idea of the main-character syndrome may seem to be one that’s only just popped up in recent years. As noted by Giurge and Bohns, though, the problem boils down to ordinary egocentrism. Introduced into the psychology literature many years ago, most famously by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in his study of child cognitive development, egocentrism became the basis for what Tufts University’s David Elkind called the “personal fable.”

Peaking in adolescence, according to Elkind, the idea that you are the star of the show is a function of the teenager’s extreme self-focus. Egocentrism, in this sense, isn’t due to selfishness or a form of pathological narcissism. It’s just that teenagers are busy developing a sense of identity that will stick with them for the rest of their lives. They naturally spend their psychological energy on imagining not just what they’re like right now, but what they’ll be like over the long haul.

As an adult, you overcome most of this essentially healthy form of egocentrism, but some of it lives inside your mind for a variety of reasons. One of the main reasons might just be simple: you look at the world from the inside out. As you “write” your personal history or autobiography, it’s natural to put yourself in the role of protagonist.

To the extent that this form of egocentrism hangs around, the feeling that you absolutely must give people answers as soon as they demand them leads you to believe that these people need you and can’t manage without you. This “supporting cast,” as it were, watches and waits as you swoop in to rescue them from whatever the dilemma is at the moment.

In the words of Giurge and Bohns, the perception that you have to provide instant replies or commentary can be characterized as “email urgency bias,” the belief that “senders expect a faster response than they actually do” (pp. 114-115). Because of this bias, you perceive any new email as a source of stress, and as more stressful than the sender would imagine.

How Boundary Theory Can Help You Understand the Problem

This mismatch between sender and receiver becomes accentuated, Giurge and Bohns note, when there is a “boundary violation” (p. 115). Remember those pre-email days when you almost never got a work phone call on a weekend or vacation day? Indeed, it’s not just work that can interfere when you're off the grid. Perhaps you’re spending some playtime with family or friends. “Ding,” rings your phone, it's an in-law asking for cooking advice. That text sits there on your screen and you feel that it would be cruel to leave the poor individual in the lurch.

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But do you stop and wonder whether the people hounding you for answers didn’t intend to violate your boundaries? What if you’re wrong, and due to your main-character syndrome, your “urgency bias” kicks in?

Across a series of 8 studies involving just over 4,000 employees, Giurge and Bohns put their participants in experimental conditions varying the nature of the email, assigning participants either to the role of sender or receiver. The findings showed that the main-character bias of over-rating the urgency of the email request was stronger when the email arrived in non-work hours.

Is There a Way Out of Your Main-Character Dilemma?

By now, you may feel somewhat relieved that those emails or texts you thought were urgent were not perceived as such by the sender. If anything, this realization can make you annoyed for a different reason, which is to wonder why the sender did this in the first place. You can now build that boundary back up and retreat from the interaction until the appropriate time— either in normal work hours or, for that relative, not in the middle of your off-grid afternoon. Maybe they’ll understand?

Indeed, in one of the conditions that Giurge and Bohns tested, the sender stated that: "This is not an urgent matter so you can get to it whenever you can.” This one small disclaimer made “senders’ ambiguous expectations explicit” (p. 123) and reduced the urgency bias.

As the research team suggests senders might “act as unintentional boundary violators” (p. 125). Rather than becoming annoyed, then, you might try stepping outside yourself and putting yourself in their place. They didn’t mean to puncture your non-work or relaxation bubble, nor will they judge you if you let the matter rest until it’s convenient.

By the same token, knowing that there is this inevitable sender-receiver paradox, maybe you can learn from this how to avoid being a boundary violator yourself. Sure, you have a question that you’d like an answer to. But why not wait until you think it will be less stressfully received?

To sum up, all communication is a two-way street, as the Giurge and Bohns note. When that communication becomes unnecessarily stressful, it’s important to be able to understand why this is happening. Revising your personal fable to take you out of the main-character role, even for a while, can allow you to maintain both your identity and your well-being.