I was recently watching the now famous Invisible Gorilla experiment. When this came out I loved the experiment and what it said about perception and selective vision. Watching it again - just now - I actually tried the experiment - counting the passes by the light colored team players, and in doing so noticed a fatal flaw in the experiment.
There are six players and one gorilla. The light colored team wears jeans and light colored shirts. The dark colored team, has one player wearing jeans and a dark shirt and two players wearing black pants and shirts. These two players, when diffused in your perphial vision (not focused) don't look much different from the gorilla - black fur pants and top, dark hair.
This appears to be a fatal flaw in the experiement. For it to be as scientific as possible, the light and dark team should have all players wear the same color jeans, and the appropriate colored top. Additionally there should be the same sample of dark and light color haired players across the teams.
I would expect that if the above conditions were met, the gorilla would be most distinguishing.
I'm not disagreeing with the hypothesis that we miss stuff because of a variety of reasons (it matches other stuff, we're paying attention to other variables). But I do think this landmark experiment could be improved. It's got biases built into it.
Well, when are you going to redo this landmark experiment with correct controls?
Posted by: PDXfirefly | February 12, 2011 at 08:59 PM
In fact, an updated version of this study fix one of the major variables you mention in this: the pants. In this video, all 6 participants are wearing very similar blue jeans. Also, they are all women, unlike the first study which was mixed genders, removing yet another variable. Since this video was an update from the last one, and people were already expecting gorillas, they also changed some other things that I won't spoil for you. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY
Posted by: JKeaton1 | July 11, 2019 at 10:00 PM