"The pattern behind self-deception".

[bindeweede]

An interesting and entertaining talk by Michael Shermer.

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_she...deception.html

[Rose]

Interesting. I’ve just ordered the book Why People Believe Weird Things.

[Tony Williams]

There's another one I've seen an excellent review of in the New Scientist and intend to buy: The Invisible Gorilla: and other ways our intuitions deceive us, by Chabris and Simons.

These are two university professors who developed that fascinating experiment to demonstrate how focusing intently on one thing can make us fail to see other very obvious things. This involves asking participants to watch closely a video of a staged handball match and to count the number of passes made between members of one of the teams. Part way through, a man in a gorilla suit joins the players and jumps up and down waving at the camera before wandering off. Amazingly, half the participants fail to notice the gorilla.

[bindeweede]

There's another one I've seen an excellent review of in the New Scientist and intend to buy: The Invisible Gorilla: and other ways out intuitions deceive us, by Chabris and Simons.

These are two university professors who developed that fascinating experiment to demonstrate how focusing intently on one thing can make us fail to see other very obvious things. This involves asking participants to watch closely a video of a staged handball match and to count the number of passes made between members of one of the teams. Part way through, a man in a gorilla suit joins the players and jumps up and down waving at the camera before wandering off. Amazingly, half the participants fail to notice the gorilla.

Tony, is this the experiment?

[Rose]

Thanks for the book recommendation. I’ll check it out.

[DrS]

I've tried that and I didn't see the gorilla until I replayed the thing.

[Tony Williams]

Tony, is this the experiment?

Yep. It's been run many times with consistent results. Obviously, it's much more likely to work if people don't know that a gorilla is due to walk on....

[Jules]

Yep. It's been run many times with consistent results. Obviously, it's much more likely to work if people don't know that a gorilla is due to walk on....

So some professor of the bleedin' obvious shows that when we're focused on a task we fail to see things which aren't relevant. Wow.

Sorry, it's just that I have a poor opinion of the field of psychology.

[Tony Williams]

So some professor of the bleedin' obvious shows that when we're focused on a task we fail to see things which aren't relevant. Wow.

Sorry, it's just that I have a poor opinion of the field of psychology.

Most people could do with a much better understanding of human psychology. The book review quotes the example of a Canadian police officer who was in hot pursuit of a felon and ran past an incident of police brutality without noticing it. The jury didn't believe that he was so focused on the chase that he didn't see the incident, and convicted him of lying about it. He was sent to prison.

[Admin]

So some professor of the bleedin' obvious shows that when we're focused on a task we fail to see things which aren't relevant. Wow.

Sorry, it's just that I have a poor opinion of the field of psychology.

Failing to see objects that are in our visual field is known as inattentional blindness (we do see them, but we fail to perceive them). Understanding it does have some important applications.

The use of men in gorilla suits etc. is probably an attempt to add some sort of 'wow' factor to make these ideas more amenable to undergraduates or youtube surfers.

An example is motorbike accidents. There are a lot of accidents with motorbikes whereby a car driver pulls up at a junction, looks around for other cars coming, sees (or perceives) a clear road, pulls out, then a motorbike smashes into the side of the car. These are known as 'looked but didn't see' accidents. They are a form of inattentional blindness - the driver was focusing their attention on other cars and so failed to notice the motor bike.

And when a motorway accident occurs in the outside lane, the police used to park behind the accident facing forwards and leave their lights flashing. But what would sometimes happen is that the driver in the outside lane would see the police car - but then smash straight into the back of it! This is because they looked and assumed that because it's in the outside lane it must be moving and then failed to see that it wasn't.

In order to overcome these problems we need our attention dragged to the stimulus. So motorbike riders should always do things like ride with their headlight on as light is good at attracting our attention or by wearing blue and fluorescent green so they look like the police (which grabs our attention!)

Likewise, when the police attend to accidents on motorways now they park their cars sideways. This unnatural orientation grabs our attention to such an extent that we have to attend to the stimulus.

So Jules, I know what you're saying regarding youtube videos and similar. They are often put up there for the wow factor but the real psychology behind the phenomena are not properly explained. But this is serious stuff and it has real and important applications.

[Rose]

An example is motorbike accidents. There are a lot of accidents with motorbikes whereby a car driver pulls up at a junction, looks around for other cars coming, sees (or perceives) a clear road, pulls out, then a motorbike smashes into the side of the car. These are known as 'looked but didn't see' accidents. They are a form of intentional blindness - the driver was focusing their attention on other cars and so failed to notice the motor bike.

That happened to me; a motorbike coming from 'nowhere' on the motorway. It was my passenger who saw him and called out a warning helping to avoid a serious accident. Your post reminded me of that incident, and remembering it made a greater impact on me than the gorilla did but I think I was looking for the gorilla.

[Croydon Bob]

but I think I was looking for the gorilla.

Yes, I saw the gorilla but I think I'd been given enough clues to be looking for something. I've managed to miss other things in real life situations.