Gorillas in Our Midst: The Illusion of Attention
By now most people have seen the video. (If you haven’t seen the video where you count the number of time one team passes the ball, watch this clip before going on.)
I’ve been reading The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, the experimental psychologists who originally conducted the gorilla experiment. The book is full of our illusions—our confident sense that we see and remember all the stuff around us.
The first illusion they cover is the illusion of attention. The truth is that “we experience far less of our visual world than we think we do.” We suffer from inattentional blindness. We tend to see that which we expect to see; but we are perfectly capable of missing that which is outside our experience or expectations.
Which means that the driver who said, “I looked in the rearview mirror before I turned but didn’t see the motorcycle” may well be telling the truth. He didn’t see it because he wasn’t expecting to see it. As a cyclist, this is a bit alarming: I’d be a lot safer riding my bike in, say, Boulder, where there are bikes everywhere (and where automobile drivers, are therefore, expecting them) than I am here in West Texas. The authors note that conspicuous clothing and blinking lights help some—but mostly with those drivers who are looking for you.
It also means that the teen who says she didn’t pick up the mess on the kitchen floor because she didn’t see it may well have been telling the truth, even though she basically stepped over it. She didn’t “see” it because of attentional blindness.
They talk about the illusions we live with, such as the illusion that if we’ll move from handheld cell phones to handsfree phones in our vehicles, we’ll be safer drivers. Studies show that’s clearly not the case. Because the problem isn’t our eyes or our hands (who usually drives with two hands anyway?). The problem is the limits we have with attention and awareness. “Driving a car and having a conversation on a cell phone, despite being well-practiced and seemingly effortless tasks, both draw upon the mind’s limited stock of attention resources. They require multitasking, and despite what you may have heard or may think, the more attention-demanding tasks you brain does, the worse it does each one.”
Related to attentional blindness is attentional deafness. We tend not to hear what we weren’t expecting to hear. Just because sound waves were in the air (“Honey, would you come in here a minute?”) doesn’t mean those waves are “heard.”
An example they point to is the infamous subway experiment with virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell. You’ve probably seen the video clip:
Gene Weingarten, a writer for the Washington Post, conducted the experiment to see if people could detect and appreciate true beauty. Did the average person know the difference between Joshua Bell and the average street musician?
Very few stopped to listen, despite the beautiful music Bell was playing on his $3,000,000 Stradivarius. So Weingarten, and then many others, concluded that we just don’t appreciate true beauty.
But Chabris and Simons note that this is the wrong conclusion. People didn’t stop to listen because they didn’t really hear Joshua Bell playing. They were focused on getting to work, they were going through their routine, and a concert violinist is not part of that routine. So they were deaf to the music. Had it really sunk in, many more would (in all likelihood) have stopped.
“Only becoming aware of the illusion of attention can help us to take steps to avoid missing what we need to see [or hear].” But even those steps won’t make everyone see the gorilla in our midst!
Seems odd, especially if you buy the conclusion that holding the phone while talking in the car isn’t the issue, that conversations between the driver and others riding in the car aren’t called out as equally dangerous. Both are conversations that distract you from driving. Conversations with those present in the car are probably more likely to cause you to look away from the road as well.
Mike,
This is a very good post. A reminder that we are often far less attentive than we think. In our families and churches and churches in particular, it would be interesting to know what gorillas we are missing.
It also makes me wonder what we are not seeing in our communities and cities even while we say we really do care (in all sincerity) about the places where we live.
Thanks again.
Thanks so much, Jim. Makes me wonder the same thing.
Gerald – Let me quote from the book:
“If you’re like many people who have heard us speak about inattention, cell phones, and driving, you may wonder why talking to someone on a phone should be any more dangerous than talking to the person in the passenger seat, which doesn’t seem objectionable. . . . It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that talking to a passenger in your car is not nearly as disruptive as talking on a cell phone. In fact, most of the evidence suggests that talking to a passenger has little or no effect on driving ability.
“Talking to a passenger could be less problematic for several reasons. First, it’s simply easier to hear and understand someone right next to you than someone on a phone, so you don’t need to exert as much effort just to keep up with the conversation. Second, the person sitting next to you provides another set of eyes—a passenger might notice something unexpected on the road and alert you, a service your cell-phone conversation partner can’t provide. The most interesting reason for this difference between cell-phone conversation partners and passengers has to do with the social demands of conversations. When you converse with the other people in your car, they are aware of the environment you are in. Consequently, if you enter a challenging driving situation and stop speaking, your passengers will quickly deduce the reason for your silence. There’s no social demand for you to keep speaking because the driving context adjusts the expectations of everyone in the car about social interaction. When talking on a cell phone, though, you feel a strong social demand to continue the conversation despite difficult driving conditions because your conversation partner has no reason to expect you to suddenly stop and start speaking. These three factors, in combination, help to explain why talking on a cell phone is particularly dangerous when driving, more so than many other forms of distraction.”
That sounds like a great book! And I will be the first to admit that I did not see the gorilla.
Amy – Nor did I the first time I saw it.
And to think………I was all excited because I had the 15 right!
I don’t even want to think about all the gorillas I have missed in my life.
DU
I’m with David: I don’t want to know how many gorillas I’ve missed. I guess it helps some to know it’s a part of being human, and not just careless inattention.
(Which isn’t to say that I’m not guilty of careless inattention at times.)
Eyes wide open. Looking for cyclists.
So what would this say about me? I miscounted the passes — but saw the gorilla!
Perhaps a little bit AD?:)
May mean you’ll see the cyclist but miss the 18 wheeler. Be careful out there, Rick!!
Yeah, I saw the gorilla. Scared me.
Amazed that the “Joshua Bell in the subway” experiment was conducted by Gene Weingarten, who was for years the editor for my favorite theologian, Dave Barry. And Weingarten is also the author of “The Hypochondriac’s Guide To Life. And Death.”
Dave Barry as theologian, huh? I think his theological stance on everything was, “I’m for not offending whichever group is best armed.”
His dad was a minister, though. It just didn’t seem to stick with the younger Dave. He was brought up Episcopalian, I think, and his first wife was Jewish. I think his second wife is non-theist, former Catholic.
He’s an interesting human and I really enjoy his writing.
(Sorry to toss a gorilla into your basketball circle here, Mike….)
What I see as the crying shame is that attentiveness and awareness are teachable and learnable. We, however, rarely teach and learn such at church.
Ummmmm, what does it mean when you only count 12 passes and do not see the gorilla? Major FAIL!
Mike, thanks for taking the time to quote the book. I’m not fully buying their explanation, but there is some truth to it.
However, one of my favorite quotes somewhat supports the notion that those in the car may help alert you to danger:
“When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep — not screaming, like the passengers in his car.”