The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons
Authors: Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons
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gorilla—the unexpected has become the target of focused attention. Devoting attention to the unexpected is not a cure-all, however. We have limited attention resources, and devoting some attention to unexpected events means that we have less attention available for our primary task. It would be imprudent to ask radiologists to take time and resources away from detecting the expected problem in an x-ray (“Doctor, can you confirm that this patient has a pulmonary embolism so that we can begin treatment?”) to focus instead on things that are unlikely to be there (“Doctor, can you tell us whether we left anything behind in this patient’s body?”). A more effective strategy would be for a second radiologist, unfamiliar with the case and the tentative diagnosis, to examine the images and to look for secondary problems that might not have been noticed the first time through.
So it turns out that even experts with a decade of training in their medical specialty can miss unexpected objects in their domain of expertise. Although radiologists are better able than laypeople to detect unusual aspects of radiographs, they suffer from the same limits on attention as everyone else. Their expertise lies not in greater attention, but in more precise expectations formed by their experience and training in perceiving the important features of the images. Experience guides them to look for common problems rather than rare anomalies, and in most cases, that strategy is wise.
What Can We Do About the Illusion of Attention?
If this illusion of attention is so pervasive, how has our species survived to write about it? Why weren’t our would-be ancestors all eaten by unnoticedpredators? In part, inattentional blindness and the accompanying illusion of attention are a consequence of modern society. Although our ancestors must have had similar limitations on awareness, in a less complex world there was less to be aware of. And few objects or events needed immediate attention. In contrast, the advance of technology has given us devices that require greater amounts of attention, more and more often, with shorter and shorter lead times. Our neurological circuits for vision and attention are built for pedestrian speeds, not for driving speeds. When you are walking, a delay of a few seconds in noticing an unexpected event is likely inconsequential. When you are driving, though, a delay of even one-tenth of a second in noticing an unexpected event can kill you (or someone else). The effects of inattention are amplified at high speeds, since any delay in noticing happens at the highest speed.
The effects of inattention are further amplified by any device or activity that takes attention away from what we are trying to do. Such devices and activities were rare in the BlackBerryless, iPhone-free, pre-GPS past, but they’re common today. Fortunately, accidents are still rare, because most of the time, nothing unexpected happens. But it is those rare unexpected events that matter. People are confident that they can drive and talk on the phone simultaneously precisely because they almost never encounter evidence that they cannot. And by “evidence” we don’t mean a news story about accident rates or a safety institute’s latest report, or even a story of a friend who zoned out while driving and almost hit something. We mean a personal experience, like a collision or a near miss, that was unambiguously caused by a depletion of attention and that cannot be explained away as the other person’s fault (a rationalization we are as good at making as we are at overestimating our own levels of attention). We will almost never be aware of the more subtle evidence of our distraction. Drivers who make mistakes usually don’t notice them; after all, they’re distracted.
The problem is that we lack positive evidence for our lack of attention. That is the basis of the illusion of attention. We are aware only of the unexpected objects we do notice, not
So it turns out that even experts with a decade of training in their medical specialty can miss unexpected objects in their domain of expertise. Although radiologists are better able than laypeople to detect unusual aspects of radiographs, they suffer from the same limits on attention as everyone else. Their expertise lies not in greater attention, but in more precise expectations formed by their experience and training in perceiving the important features of the images. Experience guides them to look for common problems rather than rare anomalies, and in most cases, that strategy is wise.
What Can We Do About the Illusion of Attention?
If this illusion of attention is so pervasive, how has our species survived to write about it? Why weren’t our would-be ancestors all eaten by unnoticedpredators? In part, inattentional blindness and the accompanying illusion of attention are a consequence of modern society. Although our ancestors must have had similar limitations on awareness, in a less complex world there was less to be aware of. And few objects or events needed immediate attention. In contrast, the advance of technology has given us devices that require greater amounts of attention, more and more often, with shorter and shorter lead times. Our neurological circuits for vision and attention are built for pedestrian speeds, not for driving speeds. When you are walking, a delay of a few seconds in noticing an unexpected event is likely inconsequential. When you are driving, though, a delay of even one-tenth of a second in noticing an unexpected event can kill you (or someone else). The effects of inattention are amplified at high speeds, since any delay in noticing happens at the highest speed.
The effects of inattention are further amplified by any device or activity that takes attention away from what we are trying to do. Such devices and activities were rare in the BlackBerryless, iPhone-free, pre-GPS past, but they’re common today. Fortunately, accidents are still rare, because most of the time, nothing unexpected happens. But it is those rare unexpected events that matter. People are confident that they can drive and talk on the phone simultaneously precisely because they almost never encounter evidence that they cannot. And by “evidence” we don’t mean a news story about accident rates or a safety institute’s latest report, or even a story of a friend who zoned out while driving and almost hit something. We mean a personal experience, like a collision or a near miss, that was unambiguously caused by a depletion of attention and that cannot be explained away as the other person’s fault (a rationalization we are as good at making as we are at overestimating our own levels of attention). We will almost never be aware of the more subtle evidence of our distraction. Drivers who make mistakes usually don’t notice them; after all, they’re distracted.
The problem is that we lack positive evidence for our lack of attention. That is the basis of the illusion of attention. We are aware only of the unexpected objects we do notice, not
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