← all facts
attention
You are blind to things right before your eyes.
When the brain is focused on a specific task, it frequently filters out entirely unrelated, visible stimuli.
In a 1999 experiment, half of the participants watching a basketball game failed to notice a person in a gorilla suit walking across the screen. Your conscious awareness is a limited resource that prioritizes expected information over unexpected sensory input. You see what you look for, but you often miss what you do not.
You do not see the world as it is.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Simons and Chabris, 1999
- What the check found
- The Invisible Gorilla study is a foundational demonstration of inattentional blindness, though the effect's consistency depends heavily on task difficulty and stimulus relevance.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.