Psycholinguistics

Book review: The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.

The book “The Invisible Gorilla” written by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons is a
review of the different illusions that deceive the human kind. The book was named “the
invisible gorilla” because of the famous attention experiment in which participants are
asked to count how many times a ball is passed among people dressed with white shirts
in a video, but there is a little catch. At the middle of the video, a person dressed up as a
gorilla shows up and walks between them. The experiment consists in counting how
many people can see the gorilla while their attention is being dragged by other thing (the
number of passes).

The authors of the book propose six different illusions that play away with us: the illusion
of attention, memory, confidence, knowledge, cause, and potential. Throughout the
book, each of these illusions is described and explained in a different chapter and each
of them has several different sections that contain experiments, examples, and evidence
of how these illusions interfere with our daily lives.

The first chapter talks about the “illusion of attention” which proposes that we don’t
perceive what happens around us as much as we think we do. In the chapter, the
authors explain that when our attention is divided, we tend to ignore some things that we
assume we will notice. We have, as an example, a legal case in which a cop called
Kenny Conley was indicted of perjury and obstruction of justice by not saving a fellow
police office who was being beaten by other cops because they had mistaken him for a
suspect in a criminal pursuit. Conley didn’t notice that his comrade was being beaten
because he was too focused on chasing a suspect who was running away. When the
prosecutors asked him if he had noticed the assault, he just answered “I think I would
have seen that”.

This shows us that we don’t perceive the word as perfectly as we think. We think that
just because something is right in front of us, we will see it, but that is not true. We see
what we want to see. If we focus our attention in something, it is most likely that we will
miss other surrounding situations.

The illusion of attention also explains that we focus our attention is things we expect to
see, and perhaps, things that we do not expect are the ones we will miss. It gives
several examples like the one in which a football player was riding a motorcycle and he
was hit by a driver who claimed she didn’t see motorcycle. The authors explained that
this a very common phenomena because what we expect to see as an obstacle when
changing the lane is not a motorcycle, but another car. So maybe the unexpected is
what becomes invisible. And that’s the illusion of attention.

The second chapter is about the illusion of memory. This illusion is about how we think
we remember things. One of the examples tells the story of a basketball player who
remembers vividly being attacked and choked by his couch. He even remembers two
teammates had to intervene and separate them, but when they watched the video of a
surveillance camera of the gym, they discovered that his memory of the attack was
completely wrong because the coach hadn’t even touched him. But why does he
remember being choked? The authors explained that the illusion of memory consists in
believing that what we remember is what happened exactly and that our memories
cannot change through time. But in this case, they say that maybe this basketball player
saw that scene of a choking in a movie or in a match and he integrated it into his brain
as if it was his.

Other example like this is a funny story between the writers of this book. They say that
they were on a party and a comrade called Ken started telling the story of how he went
to a restaurant and Patrick Stewart (Charles Xavier in X-men) was there. He remembers
Stewart ordering Baked Alaska, two members of the crew approaching him and asking
him for his autograph and even the manager coming out and apologizing for the crew’s
behavior. But the funny thing was that memory wasn’t his. It was Christopher Chabris’
story, who happened to be at the same party that day. Ken listened to Chris telling the
story and, because he is a big fan of Patrick Stewart, he took that memory and adapted
it as his. So, the illusion of memory tricks us into thinking that our memories are perfect,
infallible, and never change.
The third chapter talks about the illusion of confidence which proposes that we often
confuse confidence with knowledge and that being confident doesn’t mean we know
more. This chapter even has the phrase “In fact, those who are the least skilled are the
most likely to think better of themselves than they should..." which is exemplified with
chess competitors’ score in a tournament. Those chess players who had the lowest
scores think that they should have a higher score when, the truth is, they should have a
lower score. So, the illusion of confidence deceives us and makes us think that
someone may know more than others just because they seem confident about that
knowledge. But the reality is different. Or should be different in the way that we should
be more confident about something that we dominate instead of being confident about
things we barely know about. We also trust more in people who seem secure about their
actions, even if those actions are not right, one example includes a guy in a university
doubting his doctor’s prescription for Lyme disease because she consulted the
treatment in a book. Maybe the action of the doctor was correct, she wanted to ensure
she was giving the right treatment, but we are prone to thinking that a good doctor is
confident and knows everything by memory and consulting a book may seem
unconfident from her.

The fourth chapter describes what is known as the illusion of knowledge that is very
similar to the illusion of confidence but without the confidence element. This illusion
explains that we tend to think we know more than we do actually know. It gives as an
example the “why boy” experiment, in which psychologists ask someone something
about their “areas of expertise” and then, when an answer is given, they keep asking
“and why is that?” questions as little kids do when they start discovering the world.
Surprisingly, almost all the subject of the experiment can only reach two “why questions”
before admitting they don’t know any more. It also explains that this illusion is very
common and it persists because we tend to trust “experts” who think now more that the
actually do. Comparisons are made between investors and weather forecasters. We
usually think that an investor knows a lot about the money movements and how to
predict favorable movements and that weather forecasters are at the weather’s expense
(which is mostly unpredictable) therefore, investors will make more accurate predictions
than forecasters. But authors explain that weather forecasters have chance to monitor
and correct their predictions using past events. Certain weather conditions in the past
can help the forecaster add new information to their current prediction and make it more
accurate, which doesn’t happen with investors. Because it is being proven that applying
past strategies for new investments ends up in disaster almost every time.

The next illusion is called the illusion of cause and it is divided into three main parts:
first, that we tend to see patterns where they don’t exist (and that is why some people
see the Virgin Mary silhouette on a grilled cheese sandwich or Jesus’ face on the
bathroom tiles).

The second part is the “illusory perception of causes from correlation” and it happens
because we look at events that happen together as prediction of future events. why
people with arthritis think that their pain increases when is cold outside even if there is
no scientific evidence of low temperatures increasing the pain signals on the body.

The third part is about when we think that an event that happened earlier is the cause of
an event that happened or appeared later. The example given by the authors is the
attempt of suicide of the famous writer David Wallace. The story says that he was at
home watching a sad movie with his family, which made him upset. At the end of the
movie, his sister announced she had to go home and David asked to please stay. She
rejected and went home and few moments later David tried to commit suicide with pills.
So, the authors explained that we may think that the cause of David’s suicide attempt
was his sister’s going away just because that was the order of the events. But there are
other several reason that could have provoked the attempt that we don’t know.

The last chapter deals with the Illusion of potential which proposes that we still have a
lot of latent power in our brains just waiting to be accessed. The illusion of potential is
divided into two main statements: “that beneath the surface, the human mind and brain
harbor the potential to perform at much higher levels, in a wide range of situations and
contexts, than they typically do; and second, that this potential can be released with
simple techniques that are easily and rapidly implemented.” In this chapter they talk
about all the myths about our brain that have been stuck in the mind of majorities for a
long time. For example, the myth that classical music will increase your IQ levels
(intelligence) but that doesn’t have any scientifical evidence that proves it veracity. Or
the myth that we only use 10% of our brain when it has been proven that we use all of
our brain all the time, it’s just that some areas work harder depending on the task. Or
that we can sense when someone is staring at us from behind as if eyes produced rays
or material energy that touched us when they stare at us. But they say that is not that we
will never be able to develop a bigger potential of our brains, is just that it is not as easy
as we think. It requires a lot of time and training to change our brains and make them
more “efficient”. Nonetheless, you can train yourself into something and that something
may help you increase your proficiency into some other areas. They give the example of
a set of people who played videogames and increased their proficiency in a number of
attention and perception tasks.

The conclusion of this book is a short text about a CEO of a company. In the texts there
is one example of each of the illusions presented in the book. The challenge is for the
reader to try and identify them all. It also speaks, once again, how these illusions
deceive us in our daily lives and how can we avoid being victims of them.

I found this book really interesting and eye-opener. Even though it doesn’t have a very
simple language, it gets the ideas understood by the reader. I found myself caught in
trying to identify each of the illusions in my surroundings and it taught me things I didn’t
know. It is a very attention catching book, and what I really liked bout it is all the
examples they give and how they use their knowledge of a lot of experiments previously
done to support their ideas.