Truth 15. It's possible to miss an entire gorilla
How could you miss seeing a gorilla that is right in front of you? You could overlook a small spider, perhaps. A Chihuahua even. But a big, black, hairy gorilla would be impossible to miss, right?
Not so. In an experiment conducted by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, the proverbial 800-pound gorilla was right there in the flesh, but subjects didn't see it.8 Here's how the experiment went. The researchers showed participants a video of two teams playing basketball, one with white shirts and the other with black. The subjects were asked to count how many times the white-shirted players passed the ball. They dutifully complied, focusing on the white shirts. Bounce, bounce, bounce.
Most subjects came within one or two counts of the actual number of passes, but the majority missed something even more significant than getting the count right. A person in a gorilla costume walks right through the center of play. He even stops to beat his chest before moving on. There is a gorilla right in front of the subjects beating his chest. And they can't see it. What's wrong with this picture?
When we focus our attention on a specific area of the world or on a specific task, we can become blind to what's outside of it. This attentional blindness can cause us to miss significant issues that could affect our decisions. Where we look determines what facts we see. We're blind to the frames that we use. As every good magician knows, when we're focused intently on one thing, we may tune out other important signals.
Most subjects who see the video again without counting don't believe it's the same film. They think there has been some sleight of hand. But it isn't sleight of hand. It's sleight of head.
We see what we look for. That's the bottom line. The subjects were so focused on the task at hand that they couldn't see the "gorillas in their midst" (as the study is called).
If you're immersed in a decision, particularly involving a task that requires a lot of attention, step back from it. Shift your focus and look at the bigger picture. Do you see something else? What gorillas are you missing?