The Real-World Science of Ignoring Gorillas

I want to take some time to talk about a few of the sources that helped to shape my novel, Court of Twilight. One of these  is a well-known cognitive psychology experiment, that's actually mentioned in the book by one of the characters. The experiment is also the titular illusion in the book The Invisible Gorilla, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. Written by two cognitive psychologists, The Invisible Gorilla is an explanation of erroneous assumptions about how our brains work - what the authors refer to as everyday illusions. The researchers discuss the effects these assumptions have on how we perceive our world, and also how we act based on those erroneous perceptions.

The Invisible Gorilla cover image. Credited to ABSODALS/Getty Images

The Invisible Gorilla's cover is striking . A man in a business suit, reading a newspaper, stands obliviously next to a gorilla, who is also reading a newspaper. I think the visual image, as much as anything, was something I remembered when I was mulling over my own ideas for a story about modern-day fairies. Here is an image of something entirely unexpected (for a gorilla) but also something entirely normal (for a person). Aur gorilla is standing next to a rather urbane-looking businessman, who is either completely indifferent to his simian companion, or else completely unaware of him.

If you’re not familiar with the titular experiment, I would highly recommend you experience it for yourself. There’s a link to it here, at the Invisible Gorilla website.

No, go ahead, I’ll still be here when you get back.

Got it? Pretty cool. To summarize, the video shows two teams of players passing a basketball back and forth. The viewer is asked to watch the video, and keep track of the number of passes made by the players wearing white, while ignoring the passes made by the players wearing black. After watching the videos, the researchers ask the viewer how many passes they counted. And then, the researchers ask if the viewer saw anything unusual in the video – such as an actor in a gorilla costume walking through the middle of the players?

Although the gorilla is clearly visible in the video – it turns and thumps its chest at the camera, no less - about half of viewers fail to see it. The authors refer to this phenomenon as inattentional blindness. The brain, when concentrating on a task, shunts its attention to that task to such a degree that it starts ignoring everything irrelevant to that task - even things that are unusual, notable, and significant. Something else that Chabris and Simons note is that many people, when told that they did, in fact, ignore a gorilla walking through the middle of a basketball game, react with shock. Some study participants even went so far as to accuse the researchers of tampering with the tape, so certain were they that there hadn’t been a gorilla in the video they’d seen.

It’s a startling experiment – I was certainly surprised when I saw the video, posted on a friend’s Facebook page several years ago. And no, I did not see the gorilla either – which was probably a good thing, because I don’t know if I would have remembered the video if I hadn’t been one of the people on whom this rather suprising illusion worked. The illusion is startling mainly because we’re not used to distrusting the accuracy of our perceptions. Our brains, we’d like to think, present us with an accurate and infallible view of the world – with no omissions, paraphrases, or edits. When we do happen upon an instance where our brain’s editing, filtering, and paraphrasing mechanisms are revealed, it feels like a cheat. Like we’re getting the Cliff Notes version of reality, instead of the real thing.

When looking for a way to ground a traditional feature of fairies into a modern setting, using a beefed-up version of inattentional blindness seemed ideal. It gave me a way to ground the trows’ magical abilities (or liabilities) within a framework that had a real basis in psychology. I hope that the mention of inattentional blindness in Court of Twilight might also provoke some readers to learn more about the cognitive illusions discussed in The Invisible Gorilla. As Chabris and Simon say in the introduction to their book “When you finish this book, you will be able to glimpse the man behind the curtain and some of the tiny gears and pulleys that govern your thoughts and beliefs… Ultimately, seeing through the veils that distort how we perceive ourselves and the world will connect you – for perhaps the first time – with reality.”

The Invisible Gorilla is available for purchase here.  More information on Chabris and Simons' experiments on everyday cognitive illusions can be found on their website, The Invisible Gorilla.com.