What That Famous Gorilla Suit Study Didn’t See

28 thoughts on “What That Famous Gorilla Suit Study Didn’t See”

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2. I was a subject in a gorilla experiment when I took my first college psych class in the summer of 1982. What took them so long to publish?! I did not see the gorilla, though I did catch site of his referee shirt in the corner of my eye. When the grad student asked if I had seen anything unusual, the b/w striped shirt didn't come to mind. I am rather surprised that they have not in the last forty years thought of other ways to test this. I am also curious as to whether there is a correlation between not seeing the gorilla (aka hyperfocus) and ADHD, which I have.

   (As an aside, WTF were you thinking wearing that gross shirt Hank?)

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3. I stopped paying attention halfway through this video.

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4. People with autism are more likely to see the gorilla

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5. Its tunnel vison. When I used to play Team Fortress 2, I eventually became hyper aware, always looking around and listening to the in game sounds. On my main class, Pyro, I feel at one with everything around me and somehow am always at the right place at the right time. But when i switch classes I become a dumb and as oblivious as the average casual player.

   I realized that because my Pryo play is so intuitive, the brainpower I would use on playing my character is spent on background awareness instead. But with say, Demoman, I have to think about each shot, and my background awareness is completely gone.

   In real life, I feel at peace and am good at my job, so my background awareness feels at a supernatural level. Just my experience that I wanted to share.

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6. given the task of counting passes it feels to me like you can fail with succes by blocking out the gorilla.

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7. A lot of followers of the channel NerdForge were surprised to realize that the main presenter has been missing a finger for years (due to an accident) even though the channel revolves around her artwork, so you'll see hands a lot probably.
   We all noticed it when she uploaded a video about missing a finger.

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8. This is why Invisibility Training (see FortNine's great video) is so important for motorcyclists. Drivers generally don't expect to see a motorcycle, and a motorcycle won't generally top your attention hierarchy (unlike an unexpected dump truck). For motorcyclists, this means both that you operate with the assumption nobody can see you, and you take the steps you can to getting into that attention hierarchy (hi-viz, looking more "human", moving around in a lane, etc).

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9. I didn't see the gorilla the first time. I also like to watch reaction videos and found that people were picking up details on their first watch that I hadn't noticed even though I may have watched the movie half a dozen times or more. My attention seems to always be focused on whatever the important thing is on the screen while other people seem to be looking around at other things a lot more. I wonder if there is a correlation between those people and the people who often ask questions that have already been clearly answered in the movie.

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10. These kinds of experiments made me fall in love with social science all the way to a graduate degree.
    Designing experiments is my crack.

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11. I don't understand how anyone could AVOID seeing the gorilla.

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12. What the experiment is flipped for a double blind study & it’s a bunch of gorillas passing a basketball? Or mascots? And a human moves through at various speeds.

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13. There was also a variation of this experiment run where you told folks to watch for other changes while counting this time. ie they had seen the original gorilla video and were now being given another chance to be more aware of things other than the counting.

    While people saw the gorilla this time, on the whole, they missed the additional changes added in.

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14. but when the gorilla didn't immediately reappear from behind hank….

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15. We do similar things in the performing arts. Sometimes with lights. (a change in lighting is motion) Sometimes with actors. Sometimes with moving set pieces.
    I don't know the exact details of the psychology involved with the gorilla experiment however it appears to use the same basic principles. Focus the audiences attention on what you want them to look at just a few feet away (or further) from whatever needs to be done. Keep them distracted with whatever is going on in the story, Do something that normally doesn't happen in the natural world. Slowly move an object, or person, or change lights that they are not concentrating on. Done. Nobody noticed.
    Slow movement in relation to the speed other activity is happening is not considered a threat thus people tend to not notice it happening. The slower the change happens, the more invisible it is. Alternatively, a temporary faster movement somewhere else away from what you're doing will focus their attention elsewhere. Do that properly and you can move anything whether it's one small kid actor or a huge set piece half the size of the stage and the entire audience will not see it happening right in front of them. (There's more to the actual process than that however that's the basics of teleporting anything anywhere without anyone noticing the transition)

    I'm an ex -head stage carpenter – (I built the sets and ran the shows) And yes, I saw the well dressed gorilla the first time which is about 20 seconds into the video as he started popping in and out of existence..then again observing things that are not where they're supposed to be or having problems was part of my job for 6000+ performances so you kinda get use to things like that.

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16. You guys snuck a gorilla into the shot where you darken the video expect for the circle around the ball. Sneaky.

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17. So we process video that same way youtube does.

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18. Dancing Pineapple

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19. Revising for my Driving Theory Test right now, and I'm still getting over the moonwalking bear

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20. Jokes on you I'm just listening to the video for the most part.

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21. I'd be interested to see if there was a difference between people with ADHD and people without noticing the gorilla. My grandma showed us this video when I was in middle school. She showed us separately, at different times so it's not like we built off each other. My younger brother and I both counted the correct passes and saw the gorilla (he's diagnosed with ADHD, I am not). My cousin noticed the gorilla, stopped counting, and just watched the gorilla. All of that fit our personalities.

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22. One of my classes had us do this and I remember stopping counting completely and focusing on the gorilla.

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23. I actually had some inattentional blindness watching this video. I had the sound down and was so busy watching the captions I didn't realize Hank's back. 😅

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24. People in cars not seeing motorcycles or bicycles is probably another example

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25. I wonder what would happen if instead of the gorilla walking through the video a person in an actual gorilla suit walked around in the peripherals of the people assigned to their task.

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26. Excellent, thank you!

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27. I “failed” this gorilla test in grad school. Quite simply, I blocked out anything and everything except the basketball. You could have asked me anything outside of the ball and I would have gotten it wrong. I’d like to think that those who did notice the gorilla fail more often at tasks they were assigned as they get too easily distracted by things that don’t matter. 😁

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28. Magicians use intentional blindness. I have seen magic youtube videos, where the color of the background, participants clothes, and set are changed, and yet the average person misses it all, as I did. The number of items that changed were embarrassingly high, and I missed them all.
    There is another term, target fixation, where obvious things, like the ground are not "seen" when staffing or bombing, and then the ground is not missed, unfortunately.

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