Chapter 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 ...
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