The Invisible Gorilla - Selective Attention
Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself-and that's a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, we use a wide assortment of stories and counter intuitive scientific findings to reveal an important truth: Our minds don't work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but we're actually missing a whole lot.
We combine the work of other researchers with our own findings on attention, perception, memory, and reasoning to reveal how faulty intuitions often get us into trouble. In the process, we explain:
- Why a company would spend billions to launch a product that its own analysts know will fail
- How a police officer could run right past a brutal assault without seeing it
- Why award-winning movies are full of editing mistakes
- What criminals have in common with chess masters
- Why measles and other childhood diseases are making a comeback
- Why money managers could learn a lot from weather forecasters
Again and again, we think we experience and understand the world as it is, but our thoughts are beset by everyday illusions. We write traffic laws and build criminal cases on the assumption that people will notice when something unusual happens right in front of them. We're sure we know where we were on 9/11, falsely believing that vivid memories are seared into our mind with perfect fidelity. And as a society, we spend billions on devices to train our brains because we're continually tempted by the lure of quick fixes and effortless self-improvement.
The Invisible Gorilla reveals the numerous ways that our intuitions can deceive us, but it's more than a catalog of human failings. In the book, we also explain why people succumb to these everyday illusions and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against their effects. In short, we try to give you a sort of "x-ray vision" into your own minds, with the ultimate goal of helping you notice the invisible gorillas in your own life.
Entertaining and illuminating ... We all have incredible confidence in the accuracy of our senses, and the tales they tell us about the world we live in. Through clever experiments and captivating stories, The Invisible Gorilla shows that our confidence is misplaced..
Everyday illusions trick us into thinking that we see -and know more- than we really do, and that we can predict the future when we can't. The Invisible Gorilla teaches us exactly why, and it does so in an incredibly engaging way. Chabris and Simons provide terrific tips on how to cast off our illusions and get things right. Whether you're a driver wanting to steer clear of oncoming motorcycles, a radiologist hoping to spot every tumor, or just an average person curious about how your mind really works, this is a must-read.
Dan Simons explores why we see the world as it ISN'T.
Daniel Simons is head of the Visual Cognition Laboratory at the University of Illinois. His research explores the ways in which our beliefs and intuitions about the workings of our own minds are often mistaken and why that matters. He is best known for his experiments revealing striking failures of perception and the limits of visual awareness. His research is exhibited in science museums worldwide and his writing has been published in many newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Chicago Tribune. He recently co-authored the book, "The Invisible Gorilla, and Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us" (Crown, 2010).
The Monkey Business Illusion
This was Dan's submission to the 2010 Best Illusion of the Year contest.
The original selective attention task
This video is the one that started our collaboration and inspired the book. You can read more about it here.
A movie perception test - conversation
This video illustrates how movie perception works and is from a study by Dan and his colleague Daniel Levin.
A movie perception test
This video illustrates how movie perception works and was from a study by Dan and his colleague Daniel Levin.
This video tests how people perceive movies. Watch the brief silent video, and then answer the questions about it. It was used in a 1997 study by Daniel Levin and Daniel Simons.
The original "door" study
This video shows a subject in a person-change study conducted by Dan and his colleague Daniel Levin.
This video shows footage from a 1998 study by Daniel Simons and Daniel Levin in which a participant fails to notice when the person he is talking to is replaced by someone else. The study was among the first to demonstrate that the phenomenon of "change blindness" can occur outside the laboratory. This was the first of many studies by Simons, Levin, and colleagues to explore how change blindness can occur in the real world.
Intuitions about perception
This video shows Dan interviewing people about their beliefs about perception, with an unexpected guest.
Chris's presentation at PopTech 2010
Chris's talk entitled "When intuition fails."
Interview of Dan
Dan and a special guest were interviewed in this film produced by the Beckman Institute
Invisible Gorilla Around Town
Watch what happens when Dan dons a gorilla suit and walks around Champaign, Illinois.
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Replies
Oh yes its actually very accurate information... I even tested it on people over here with a group of youth and it was just amazing how many of them are actually very unaware of their surroundings and act like they have tunnel vision only..its not good and the internet sadly is making it worse for this new generation..technology is in effect altering their brain in a bad way..its killing off the frountal lobe and making them more aggressive too..this isnt just a phase they will grow out of either its an actual fact they will have different activity in their brain & they just wont function the same..Social workers at my work are actually speaking of this now also and they fear mental illness is going to rise in the next 15yrs more than it is now...that's a scary thought in itself.
I agree about the tech...perhaps the worse thing is the lack of real interaction with others. One good thing that I found that gives one the ability to think deeper about things is the Bach flower essence Chestnut Bud. I took this because my attention span was too short and it is like 5 years of meditation in a bottle....really amazing, like all the Bach Flower essences.. http://www.bachflower.org/chestnut_bud.htm
This is very good info that we all need to understand....I do not think that most people realize just how different their perception is from reality. Thanks for posting this.......