Notice the gorilla?
We often don’t see what’s directly in front of us, studies suggest
If your eyesight is reasonable, can you see what’s right in front of you? What an odd question, you may think. But psychologists have found that although at some level we register what we look at, we’re not consciously aware of a lot of it.
U.S. psychologists Arien Mack and Irvin Rock coined the term “inattentional blindness” in 1998 when they found that 25 to 50 per cent of participants asked to look at visual displays failed to notice particular shapes if not asked to look for them specifically. This attracted the interest of psychologist Daniel Simons.
Simons and Christopher Chabris, then at Harvard, asked 192 undergraduates to watch a video clip of students dressed in black or white T-shirts passing a basketball to one another. Observers were tasked with counting the number of passes made by players wearing either black or white. About twothirds into the 75-second clip, an unexpected event took place: Either a woman holding an opened umbrella or someone dressed in a gorilla suit strolled through the players. When asked afterward, 46 per cent of participants said they hadn’t noticed anything unusual.
Next, Simons and Daniel Levin at Kent State asked someone to approach pedestrians on a college campus and ask for directions. After about 15 seconds, two other people carrying a large door walked rudely between them. During that brief moment, the person asking for directions changed places with one of the two people carrying the door, so, when the pedestrian could once again see the person he was helping, that person had “become” someone different. Yet when questioned later, seven of the 15 — again, nearly half — failed to notice the switch.
Next, Ronald Resnick at the University of British Columbia asked observers to view a sequence of displays that alternated between an image of a scene — say, a marketplace — and the same scene with one easily visible detail changed. A number of studies followed using this “flicker paradigm” and, time and time again, only about half the participants reported any difference, although, when told where to direct their attention, most spotted the changes immediately. In one study, even when given more time, around half the participants still failed to “see” what was right before them.
These studies suggest that, unless we think about it, we’ll “see” only what we’re looking for or are asked to look for, thereby merely reinforcing what we already know and expect.
Why not open yourself to new possibilities and keep your outlook fresh? It’s easy to do and needn’t take long.
Once a day for two minutes, stop your busy “doing ” and become curious. Pick up an object you think you know well and study it, fully, without expectations or judgment. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how this simple exercise will help you “see” more — not just details of familiar objects, but possibilities and opportunities you may not have noticed.