invisible gorilla experiment youtube

But Did You See the Gorilla? The Problem With Inattentional Blindness

The most effective cloaking device is the human mind

Daniel Simons

For more than a decade, my colleagues and I have been studying a form of invisibility known as inattentional blindness. In our best-known demonstration, we showed people a video and asked them to count how many times three basketball players wearing white shirts passed a ball. After about 30 seconds, a woman in a gorilla suit sauntered into the scene, faced the camera, thumped her chest and walked away. Half the viewers missed her. In fact, some people looked right at the gorilla and did not see it.

That video was an Internet sensation. So, in 2010, I decided to make a sequel. This time viewers were expecting the gorilla to make an appearance. And it did. But the viewers were so focused on watching for the gorilla that they overlooked other unexpected events, such as the curtain in the background changing color.

How could they miss something right before their eyes? This form of invisibility depends not on the limits of the eye, but on the limits of the mind. We consciously see only a small subset of our visual world, and when our attention is focused on one thing, we fail to notice other, unexpected things around us—including those we might want to see.

Consider, for instance, a famous 1995 incident in which police were in hot pursuit of four suspects driving away from the scene of a shooting. After cornering the suspects, the first police officer on the scene, Michael Cox, chased one of them on foot. Other officers arriving on the scene mistakenly thought Cox was a suspect and beat him. Meanwhile, another officer, Kenny Conley, had taken up pursuit of the same suspect and ran right past the altercation. Conley claimed not to have seen Cox or his assailants, and he was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Conley’s conviction raised an intriguing legal issue: Could an eyewitness actually fail to notice an assault like that one? Last year, psychology professor Christopher Chabris and I decided to put Conley’s alibi to the test. Although we could not simulate a high-speed police pursuit, we could extract the most critical element: Conley’s focus on pursuing a suspect. In our experiment, we asked participants to jog behind an assistant and count the number of times he touched his hat. As they jogged, they ran past a staged fight in which two men appeared to be beating a third. Even in broad daylight, over 40 percent missed the fight. At night, 65 percent missed it. In light of such data, Conley’s statement that he didn’t even see Cox or his assailants was plausible.

Indeed, most of us are unaware of the limits of our attention—and therein lies the real danger. For instance, we may talk on the phone and drive because we are mistakenly convinced that we would notice a sudden event, such as a car stopping short in front of us.

Inattentional blindness does have an upside. Our ability to ignore distractions around us allows us to retain our focus. Just don’t expect your partner to be charitably disposed when your focus on the television renders her or him invisible.

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Selective Attention/ Invisible Gorilla Experiment: See Through Your Focus

Introduction

You decide to see the latest thriller with your younger brother. You purchase your tickets, snacks, and drinks. All that’s left is to secure your seats. When you enter the theater, you scan the rows, looking for the perfect spot. Lo and behold, you find one: two open seats in the middle. You’re about to walk towards them when someone calls your name.

You trace the noise back two rows and see Jackie, a girl from your science class. She’s waving both her arms enthusiastically. When your eyes meet, she smiles and calls out, “Hello!” You wave back. How did you fail to spot her? 

Your selective attention led to an episode of inattentional blindness. Your focus was on finding a seat, so you didn’t notice Jackie even though she was clearly visible. 

Definition/Selective Attention

Selective attention is the process of focusing on a particular stimulus or stimuli, which results in the ignoring of other simultaneously occurring stimuli. Because your attention has already reached its limit, inattentional blindness can occur. You can fail to see something fully visible but unexpected - like a classmate at the movie theater - because your focus is on something else - like finding a seat. This phenomenon was famously recorded by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris in their “invisible gorilla” awareness test.

The study was conducted in 1999 at Harvard University. It involved a short video of people in white t-shirts and black t-shirts passing a basketball to people in the same colored shirt. Participants were asked to watch this video and count the number of passes the white team made. Most could correctly list the number of passes and thought it was a relatively easy task. Yet despite this, over half of the participants failed to notice a person in a gorilla suit walk between the basketball players, stand and face the camera, bang their chest, and walk offscreen.

This goes against nearly everyone’s intuition: we’d expect to be able to spot such an obvious occurrence. Yet repeated studies have gathered similar results: we aren’t as observant as we like to think. If we don’t expect to see something, odds are we won’t notice it. Selective attention has its benefits, but it can cause you to miss out on something as obvious as a gorilla thumping its chest. 

Participants didn’t suffer when they failed to spot a gorilla while counting passes, but the consequences of selective attention can be far reaching and dangerous. Similar studies to the Invisible Gorilla Test have been replicated with experts and they faired only slightly better than the participants in the original study did. When looking closely at lung scans for signs of cancer, most radiologists did not see the superimposed picture of a gorilla until it was pointed out to them. If they failed to notice something as out of place as a gorilla, it stands to reason that even experts can be blind to medical anomalies or early warning signs of illnesses. 

A much more commonplace example stems from the false belief that there’s such a thing as true, effective multitasking. For example, while you might never text and drive, you may on occasion answer a phone call while you commute. “It’s not like I’m taking my eyes off the road,” you may argue, “I should be able to listen and look at the same time.” However, vision has little to do with the problem of inattentional blindness. In fact, of the participants who failed to spot the gorilla, many of them looked directly at it. So even though you’re looking at the road, that doesn’t mean you can keep track of every detail you see. Your attention is still being divided, leaving you in danger of inattentional blindness, such as not seeing a motorcycle switch into your lane.

It’s impossible to be paying attention to everything at all times, so there isn’t an easy fix for selective attention. Rather, the remedy lies in acknowledging its existence and making informed decisions based on this truth. For example, since you know you can’t focus on both driving and your phone call, you make the decision to turn your phone on silent when you drive or leave it in the backseat. You make the choice to place your attention on the road rather than trying to multitask. Selective attention can even be beneficial if you’re placing your focus on the correct task. While you won’t notice if your phone lights up with new messages in the back seat, you will notice the car in front of you slowing down. Selective attention is useful, so long as you remember its limits.

Think Further

• Recall a time when you were so focused on your task, you failed to notice a change in your environment. What were you doing? What did you fail to notice?
• What are some other dangers of selective attention and inattentional blindness?
• What are some other benefits of selective attention?

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'Invisible Gorilla' Test Shows How Little We Notice

A dumbfounding study roughly a decade ago that many now find hard to believe revealed that if people are asked to focus on a video of other people passing basketballs, about half of watchers missed a person in a gorilla suit walking in and out of the scene thumping its chest.

Now research delving further into this effect shows that people who know that such a surprising event is likely to occur are no better at noticing other unforeseen events — and may even be worse at noticing them — than others who aren't expecting the unexpected.

The so-called "invisible gorilla" test had volunteers watching a video where two groups of people — some dressed in white, some in black — are passing basketballs around. The volunteers were asked to count the passes among players dressed in white while ignoring the passes of those in black. (To watch the video for yourself, click here .)

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These confounding findings from cognitive psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris detailed in a 1999 study revealed how people can focus so hard on something that they become blind to the unexpected, even when staring right at it. When one develops "inattentional blindness," as this effect is called, it becomes easy to miss details when one is not looking out for them.

"Although people do still try to rationalize why they missed the gorilla, it's hard to explain such a failure of awareness without confronting the possibility that we are aware of far less of our world than we think," Simons told LiveScience.

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Gorilla infamy

Of course, these results are utterly counterintuitive, with 90 percent of people now predicting that they would notice the gorilla in the video. The problem is that this video has become so famous that many people know to look for a gorilla when asked to count basketball passes.

In new research, Simons decided to use the infamy of the invisible gorilla to his advantage, creating a similar video that asked for the same results from the audience.

"I thought it would be fun to see if I could monkey with people's intuitions again using almost the same task," Simons said.

(Stop now! Before reading further, try his test out here .)

The idea with this new video was to see if those who knew about the invisible gorilla beforehand would be more or less likely to notice other unexpected events in the same video.

"You can make two competing predictions," Simons said. "Knowing about the invisible gorilla might increase your chances of noticing other unexpected events because you know that the task tests whether people spot unexpected events. You might look for other events because you know that the experimenter is up to something." Alternatively, "knowing about the gorilla might lead viewers to look for gorillas exclusively, and when they find one, they might fail to notice anything else out of the ordinary."

Expecting the unexpected

Of the 41 volunteers Simon tested who had never seen or heard about the old video, a little less than half missed the gorilla in the new video, much like what happened in the old experiments. The 23 volunteers he tested who knew about the original gorilla video all spotted the fake ape in the new experiment.

However, knowing about the gorilla beforehand did not improve their chances of detecting other unexpected events. Only 17 percent of those who were familiar with the old video noticed one or both of the other unexpected events in the new video. In comparison, 29 percent of those who knew nothing of the old video spotted one of the other unexpected events in the new video.

"This demonstration is much like a good magic trick in which a magician repeatedly makes a ball disappear," Simons said. "A magician can lead the audience to think he's going to make the ball disappear with one method, and while people watch for that technique, he uses a different one. In both cases, the effect capitalizes on what people expect to see, and both demonstrate that we often miss what we don't expect to see."

"A lot of people seem to take the message of our original gorilla study to be that people don't pay enough attention to what is happening around them, and that by paying more attention and 'expecting the unexpected,' we will be able to notice anything important," he added. "The new experiment shows that even when people know that they are doing a task in which an unexpected thing might happen, that doesn't suddenly help them notice other unexpected things."

Once people find the first thing they're looking for, "they often don't notice other things," Simons said. "Our intuitions about what we will and won't notice are often mistaken."

Simons detailed his new findings online July 12 in the journal i-Perception.

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Why Even Radiologists Can Miss A Gorilla Hiding In Plain Sight

Alix Spiegel

Notice anything unusual about this lung scan? Harvard researchers found that 83 percent of radiologists didn't notice the gorilla in the top right portion of this image. Trafton Drew and Jeremy Wolfe hide caption

Notice anything unusual about this lung scan? Harvard researchers found that 83 percent of radiologists didn't notice the gorilla in the top right portion of this image.

This story begins with a group of people who are expert at looking: the professional searchers known as radiologists.

"If you watch radiologists do what they do, [you're] absolutely convinced that they are like superhuman," says Trafton Drew , an attention researcher at Harvard Medical School.

About three years ago, Drew started visiting the dark, cavelike "reading rooms" where radiologists do their work. For hours he would stand watching them, in awe that they could so easily see in the images before them things that to Drew were simply invisible.

"These tiny little nodules that I can't even see when people point to them — they're just in a different world when it comes to finding this very, very hard-to-find thing," Drew says.

In the Invisible Gorilla study, subjects have to count how many times the people in white shirts pass the basketball. By focusing their attention on the ball, they tend to not notice when a guy in a gorilla suit shows up.

But radiologists still sometimes fail to see important things, and Drew wanted to understand more. Because of his line of work, he was naturally familiar with one of the most famous studies in the field of attention research, the Invisible Gorilla study .

In that groundbreaking study, research subjects are shown a video of two teams of kids — one team wears white; the other wears black — passing two basketballs back and forth between players as they dodge and weave around each other. Before it begins, viewers are told their responsibility is to do one thing and one thing only: count how many times the players wearing white pass the ball to each other.

This task isn't easy. Because the players are constantly moving around, viewers really have to concentrate to count the throws.

Then, about a half-minute into the video, a large man in a gorilla suit walks on screen, directly to the middle of the circle of kids. He stops momentarily in the center of the circle, looks straight ahead, beats his chest, and then casually strolls off the screen.

The kids keep playing, and then the video ends and a series of questions appear, including: "Did you see the gorilla?"

"Sounds ridiculous, right?" says Drew. "There's a gorilla on the screen — of course you're going to see it! But 50 percent of people miss the gorilla."

This is because when you ask someone to perform a challenging task, without realizing it, their attention narrows and blocks out other things. So, often, they literally can't see even a huge, hairy gorilla that appears directly in front of them.

That effect is called "inattentional blindness" — which brings us back to the expert lookers, the radiologists.

Drew wondered if somehow being so well-trained in searching would make them immune to missing large, hairy gorillas. "You might expect that because they're experts, they would notice if something unusual was there," he says.

He took a picture of a man in a gorilla suit shaking his fist, and he superimposed that image on a series of slides that radiologists typically look at when they're searching for cancer. He then asked a bunch of radiologists to review the slides of lungs for cancerous nodules. He wanted to see if they would notice a gorilla the size of a matchbook glaring angrily at them from inside the slide.

But they didn't: 83 percent of the radiologists missed it, Drew says.

This wasn't because the eyes of the radiologists didn't happen to fall on the large, angry gorilla. Instead, the problem was in the way their brains had framed what they were doing. They were looking for cancer nodules, not gorillas. "They look right at it, but because they're not looking for a gorilla, they don't see that it's a gorilla," Drew says.

In other words, what we're thinking about — what we're focused on — filters the world around us so aggressively that it literally shapes what we see. So, Drew says, we need to think carefully about the instructions we give to professional searchers like radiologists or people looking for terrorist activity, because what we tell them to look for will in part determine what they see and don't see.

Drew and his co-author Jeremy Wolfe are doing more studies, looking at how to help radiologists see both visually and cognitively the things that hide, sometimes in plain sight.

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New Findings Cast Doubt on the "Invisible Gorilla" Experiment

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We are quite good at spotting unexpected objects while focused on another activity if they are moving fast, reveals a new study by a team of New York University researchers. Their findings cast doubt on a long-standing view that our ability to see the unexpected is necessarily impaired when our attention is already directed elsewhere.

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“For decades, it’s been thought that when we’re intently focused on something relevant, like driving or playing a game, we fail to spot something that unexpectedly enters our field of vision, even if it is clearly visible and moving,” says Pascal Wallisch, a clinical associate professor at New York University’s Center for Data Science and Department of Psychology and lead author of the paper, which appears in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . “Our study questions the generality of this view because it shows that people, while focusing on a task, are quite capable of noticing unexpected objects that are moving quickly. However, our research confirms that we are indeed less adept at noticing these same objects when they are moving slowly.”

The research team, who also included Wayne Mackey, Michael Karlovich, and David Heeger, centered its study on “inattentional blindness”—the inability to notice unexpected objects if attention is focused on a task. This phenomenon was evident in the widely cited 1990s “ invisible gorilla experiment .” In that study, the participants—watching a video of students passing basketballs—did not notice an unexpectedly appearing person in a gorilla costume because they were already tasked with, and engaged in, counting the number of passes between players wearing white shirts. 

Credit: Lascap Foxman via YouTube

This and similar studies characterized one of the most striking phenomena in cognitive psychology—inattentional blindness—as an inevitable flip side of task focusing, and essentially a deficit. 

In the  PNAS  study, the NYU research team sought to better understand the nature of inattentional blindness through a series of experiments—and, specifically, whether our cognitive processing was indeed as limited as this previous work suggested. 

They replicated the invisible gorilla experiment using more than 1,500 of research participants—but including several new conditions. In the original 1999 experiment, the gorilla moved slowly as well as upright—like a human (which it was!). 

In the new  PNAS  research, research participants saw the gorilla (yes, also a human dressed in a gorilla costume) in additional ways. Specifically, the “NYU gorilla” moved at various speeds—in some conditions, just a little faster than the “original gorilla” and, in others, substantially faster than the original gorilla. During these experiments—just like in the original experiment—research participants were tasked with counting the number of basketball passes made by players wearing black or white shirts.

A video of the experiment may be viewed  here .

Overall, the results showed that participants, while engaged in the pass-counting task, were more likely to spot the NYU gorilla if it was moving substantially faster than in the original 1999 experiment  or  if it was leaping instead of walking. 

To ensure these findings generalize beyond spotting gorillas, the researchers then conducted a series of experiments, using approximately 3,000 other participants, that replicated the principles of the invisible gorilla study. In these, research participants were asked to count how many randomly moving dots of a given color were crossing a central line while an unexpected moving object (UMO) —a triangle— was traversing the screen at various speeds.

As with the gorilla study, the participants were more likely to spot the triangle the faster it was moving. Importantly, the authors note, the same was not observed for triangles that were moving slower than the dots, which is remarkable given that the slower moving triangles are on the screen substantially longer. This finding also rules out the following: that the noticeability of the fast moving UMOs is simply due to physical dissimilarity to the task-relevant dots. As the authors write in the paper:  

“(O)ur findings…contribute to the ongoing debate on the impact of physical salience on inattentional blindness, suggesting that it is fast speeds specifically, not the physical salience of a feature more generally, that captures attention.”

The findings also might also have evolutionary implications. The classical view of inattentional blindness would leave a task-focused organism vulnerable to unexpected threats. These new  PNAS  findings, by contrast, suggest that organisms possess a “sentinel” system that constantly monitors the environment. This system alerts organisms to potential threats—specifically, fast-moving attacking predators. 

“Fast-moving, unexpected objects seem to override the task focus of an organism,” says Wallisch. “This will allow it to notice and react to the new potential threat, improving chances of survival.” 

Reference : Wallisch P, Mackey WE, Karlovich MW, Heeger DJ. The visible gorilla: Unexpected fast—not physically salient—Objects are noticeable. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 2023;120(22):e2214930120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2214930120

This article has been republished from the following materials . Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Are we truly 'inattentionally blind'? New study revisits 'invisible gorilla' experiment for new insights

by New York University

We are quite good at spotting unexpected objects while focused on another activity if they are moving fast, reveals a new study by a team of New York University researchers. Their findings cast doubt on a long-standing view that our ability to see the unexpected is necessarily impaired when our attention is already directed elsewhere.

"For decades, it's been thought that when we're intently focused on something relevant, like driving or playing a game, we fail to spot something that unexpectedly enters our field of vision, even if it is clearly visible and moving," says Pascal Wallisch, a clinical associate professor at New York University's Center for Data Science and Department of Psychology and lead author of the paper, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . "Our study questions the generality of this view because it shows that people, while focusing on a task, are quite capable of noticing unexpected objects that are moving quickly. However, our research confirms that we are indeed less adept at noticing these same objects when they are moving slowly."

The research team, who also included Wayne Mackey, Michael Karlovich, and David Heeger, centered its study on "inattentional blindness"—the inability to notice unexpected objects if attention is focused on a task. This phenomenon was evident in the widely cited 1990s " invisible gorilla experiment ." In that study, the participants—watching a video of students passing basketballs—did not notice an unexpectedly appearing person in a gorilla costume because they were already tasked with, and engaged in, counting the number of passes between players wearing white shirts.

This and similar studies characterized one of the most striking phenomena in cognitive psychology —inattentional blindness—as an inevitable flip side of task focusing, and essentially a deficit.

In the PNAS study, the NYU research team sought to better understand the nature of inattentional blindness through a series of experiments—and, specifically, whether our cognitive processing was indeed as limited as this previous work suggested.

They replicated the invisible gorilla experiment using more than 1,500 of research participants—but including several new conditions. In the original 1999 experiment, the gorilla moved slowly as well as upright—like a human (which it was!).

In the new PNAS research, research participants saw the gorilla (yes, also a human dressed in a gorilla costume) in additional ways. Specifically, the "NYU gorilla" moved at various speeds—in some conditions, just a little faster than the "original gorilla" and, in others, substantially faster than the original gorilla. During these experiments—just like in the original experiment—research participants were tasked with counting the number of basketball passes made by players wearing black or white shirts.

A video of the experiment may be viewed below:

Overall, the results showed that participants, while engaged in the pass-counting task, were more likely to spot the NYU gorilla if it was moving substantially faster than in the original 1999 experiment or if it was leaping instead of walking.

To ensure these findings generalize beyond spotting gorillas, the researchers then conducted a series of experiments, using approximately 3,000 other participants, that replicated the principles of the invisible gorilla study. In these, research participants were asked to count how many randomly moving dots of a given color were crossing a central line while an unexpected moving object (UMO) —a triangle— was traversing the screen at various speeds.

As with the gorilla study, the participants were more likely to spot the triangle the faster it was moving. Importantly, the authors note, the same was not observed for triangles that were moving slower than the dots, which is remarkable given that the slower moving triangles are on the screen substantially longer. This finding also rules out the following: that the noticeability of the fast moving UMOs is simply due to physical dissimilarity to the task-relevant dots. As the authors write in the paper:

"(O)ur findings…contribute to the ongoing debate on the impact of physical salience on inattentional blindness, suggesting that it is fast speeds specifically, not the physical salience of a feature more generally, that captures attention."

The findings also might also have evolutionary implications. The classical view of inattentional blindness would leave a task-focused organism vulnerable to unexpected threats. These new PNAS findings, by contrast, suggest that organisms possess a "sentinel" system that constantly monitors the environment. This system alerts organisms to potential threats—specifically, fast-moving attacking predators.

"Fast-moving, unexpected objects seem to override the task focus of an organism," says Wallisch. "This will allow it to notice and react to the new potential threat, improving chances of survival."

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The Invisible Gorilla Experiment: Lessons for You to Learn

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).

Lessons Learned by the Experiment ‘The Invisible Gorilla”

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.

Attention Plays Major Role in Visual Perception

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].

Our Intuition has Limitations

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.  

Should it be a Matter of Concern?

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.

Over to You

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.