The Invisible Gorilla was a psychological experiment done almost a decade back. This experiment designed and conducted by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons reveals the limited power of human intuition. It showed that we can miss even a huge Gorilla passing in front of our eyes. Unbelievable. Isn’t it?
This was exactly the point put forth by the researchers. The volunteers participating in the experiment were sure that they cannot miss noticing something as huge as a Gorilla if it was in front of their eyes. But, the experiment proved that 50% of the participants missed seeing the Gorilla when they were busy counting ball passes by players in white (the task given to them).
You can read about the experiment in more detail and even see the video of the experiment online if you wish. Here we are listing the two important lessons we can learn from this experiment.
We have been told since childhood that we see everything that forms its image on our retina. But, this experiment revealed that our attention plays a major role in our visual perception. Our eyes may see something but we cannot acknowledge seeing it unless our brain registers it. And, our brain registers something only when it pays attention to it.
[Note: Following the original experiment researchers tracked the eye movement of the participants revealing that even those who did not see the Gorilla looked at it for about a second].
The result of the experiment is undoubtedly counterintuitive. No person can believe that they can miss seeing such an obvious thing as a Gorilla. But, repeated experiments, the latest one called the Monkey Business Illusion, prove that the human mind can completely miss noticing something unexpected. However strong is our intuition about something we can still miss out on many things.
The phenomenon revealed by the experiment is called ‘Inattentional Blindness’. The term simply means that we are blind to things we don’t pay attention to. When we are focusing our attention on a particular thing we are more likely to miss things our brain does not consider important.
So, in that sense inattentional blindness can be seen as a boon to humankind. Our world is so full of distractions. This phenomenon helps us to focus on things that we consider important. We do not have unlimited power of attention. Hence, Inattentional blindness helps us naturally weed out distractions.
Do you now feel less confident about your intuitions? Would you now ever rely 100% on your intuitions? Does this experiment make you more considerate of other people’s opinions? Will you now try to focus more on your surroundings so that you miss lesser things? Or do you think you miss out only unimportant details? We want you to think deeply on these questions rather than gulping the above given information just like other loads of information you consume daily through social media.
