Posted on 01/07/2012 6:20:54 PM PST by JerseyHighlander
Interesting post on limits of our perception and awareness.
Late one January night in 1995, Boston police officer Kenny Conley ran right past the site of a brutal beating without doing a thing about it. The case received extensive media coverage because the victim was an undercover police officer and the aggressors were other cops. Conley steadfastly refused to admit having seen anything, and he was tried and convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors, jurors, and judges took Conley’s denial to reflect an unwillingness to testify against other cops, a lie by omission. How could you run right past something as dramatic as a violent attack without seeing it? Chris Chabris and I used this example to open our book because it illustrates two fundamental aspects of how our minds work. First, we experience inattentional blindness, a failure to notice unexpected events that fall outside the focus of our attention. Second, we are largely oblivious to the limits of perception, attention, and awareness; we think that we are far more likely to notice unexpected events than we actually are.
Chabris and I have studied this phenomenon of inattentional blindness for many years. Our best-known study was based on earlier work by Ulric Neisser: We asked subjects to count how many times three players wearing white shirts passed a basketball while ignoring players wearing black who passed their own ball. We found that about 50 percent of subjects failed to notice when a person in a gorilla suit unexpectedly walked through the scene./a/nav
Did you know that if you start to nod off in a car with ESC (electronic stability control) it will wake you up.
I watched that a while back - noticed the gorilla right away.
Conley may or may not have been lying but I know I have missed things that occurred right in front of me because I was intent on something else. I have heard other people say things like How could I have missed that? It happened right there!”
When I’m driving, I’m pretty intent on driving...
bmfl
This undoubtedly accounts for the fact that so few people have actually seen a yeti or a sasquatch.
On the other hand, 99% of people wouldn't see the gorilla that wasn't there.
.
.
.
It’s one thing to watch a video and not see the gorilla. It’s quite a different thing to be sitting in the gym and not see it.
If you take the same passing the ball video and expand the borders to either side, people instantly see the gorilla when he first appears.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.