“The guerrilla video makes people angry,” says Schlitz. “We don’t like to think we’re being tricked. And we especially don’t like it if we’re tricking ourselves. I’ve watched people, and they are absolutely convinced that when you show them the gorilla experiment you showed them two different videos. They are 100% convinced that missing something so obvious could not possibly happen.
“Our culture very much emphasizes physical aspects of material reality. And yet the experiments in inattentional blindness and show us that, even at the physical level, we can miss a lot. We do miss a lot. All the time. Everyday.”
For more information on inattentional blindness and a look at some of the video clips useed by Simons and Chabris http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/djs_lab/demos.html
Unfortunately once you know what to expect it’s hard not to see what’s going on.
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