The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us |  | Authors: Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
Buy New: $15.19
as of 9/7/2010 09:32 CDT details
You Save: $11.81 (44%)
New (39) Used (10) from $15.19
Seller: BRILANTI BOOKS
Rating:  69 reviews
Sales Rank: 1,826
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0307459659
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.74
EAN: 9780307459657
ASIN: 0307459659
Publication Date: May 18, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780307459657 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Tom Vanderbilt Reviews The Invisible Gorilla Tom Vanderbilt writes on design, technology, architecture, science, and many other topics. He is author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) published in 2008 by Alfred A. Knopf, and Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America, published in 2002 by Princeton Architectural Press. He is contributing editor to I.D. and Print magazines, contributing writer at Design Observer, and writes for many publications, ranging from Wired to the New York Times to Men's Vogue to the Wilson Quarterly. He lives in Brooklyn, NY. 
Do you remember when you first saw--or more likely, didn’t see--the gorilla? For me it was one afternoon a number of years ago when I clicked open one of those noxious-but-irresistible forwarded emails ("You Won’t Believe Your Eyes!"). The task was simple--count the number of passes in a tight cluster of basketball players--but the ensuing result was astonishing: As I dutifully (and correctly) tracked the number of passes made, a guy in a gorilla suit had strolled into the center, beat his chest, and sauntered off. But I never saw the gorilla. And I was hardly alone. The video, which went on to become a global viral sensation, brought "inattentional blindness"--a once comparatively obscure interest of cognitive psychologists--into striking relief. Here was a dramatic reminder that looking is not necessarily seeing, that “paying” attention to one thing might come at the cost of missing another altogether. No one was more taken with the experience than the authors of the original study, Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, as they recount in their new--and, dare I say, eye-opening--book, The Invisible Gorilla. "The fact that people miss things is important," they write, "but what impressed us even more was the surprise people showed when they realized what they had missed." The Invisible Gorilla uses that ersatz primate as a departure point (and overarching metaphor) for exploring the myriad of other illusions, perceptual or otherwise, that we encounter in everyday life--and our often complete lack of awareness as we do so. These "gorillas" are lurking everywhere--from the (often false) memories we think we have to the futures we think we can anticipate to the cause-and-effect chains we feel must exist. Writing with authority, clarity, and a healthy dose of skepticism, Simons and Chabris explore why these illusions persist--and, indeed, seem to multiply in the modern world--and how we might work to avoid them. Alas, there are no easy solutions--doing crosswords to stave off cognitive decline in one’s dotage may simply make you better at doing crosswords. But looking for those "gorillas in our midst" is as rewarding as actually finding them. (Photo © Kate Burton)
Product Description
Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself—and that’s a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, creators of one of psychology’s most famous experiments, use remarkable stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to demonstrate an important truth: Our minds don’t work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but we’re actually missing a whole lot.
Chabris and Simons combine the work of other researchers with their own findings on attention, perception, memory, and reasoning to reveal how faulty intuitions often get us into trouble. In the process, they explain:
• Why a company would spend billions to launch a product that its own analysts know will fail
• How a police officer could run right past a brutal assault without seeing it
• Why award-winning movies are full of editing mistakes
• What criminals have in common with chess masters
• Why measles and other childhood diseases are making a comeback
• Why money managers could learn a lot from weather forecasters
Again and again, we think we experience and understand the world as it is, but our thoughts are beset by everyday illusions. We write traffic laws and build criminal cases on the assumption that people will notice when something unusual happens right in front of them. We’re sure we know where we were on 9/11, falsely believing that vivid memories are seared into our minds with perfect fidelity. And as a society, we spend billions on devices to train our brains because we’re continually tempted by the lure of quick fixes and effortless self-improvement.
The Invisible Gorilla reveals the myriad ways that our intuitions can deceive us, but it’s much more than a catalog of human failings. Chabris and Simons explain why we succumb to these everyday illusions and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against their effects. Ultimately, the book provides a kind of x-ray vision into our own minds, making it possible to pierce the veil of illusions that clouds our thoughts and to think clearly for perhaps the first time.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 69
 Great Book April 13, 2010
Alan Dale Daniel (St. George, UT, USA)
28 out of 28 found this review helpful
The Invisible Gorilla is an unusual name for an unusual book. The authors Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons have assembled a evidence of six illusions that impact our lives in significant ways. Chapter One deals with the illusion of attention, that is, the illusion that we see or observe far more than we think. Several experiments have proven that even obvious things are easily missed by people. Up to fifty percent of testers failed to see a fake gorilla enter a basketball game where the testers were counting the number of ball passes rather than looking for gorillas. It is from this experiment that the book gets its name.
Most think that such a gorilla would be easily noticed; however, various experiments have shown this is not the case. This lack of ability to see objects that are not expected may explain why cars pull out in front of motorcycles, as it is theorized that people driving cars do not expect to see motorcycles and thus they do not. Cell phone users also miss obvious objects while they are driving. It seems cell phone users that are driving suffer from a reduction in awareness, but they are not aware of it. Thus the illusion that they are as fully aware while talking on the phone as they are when the phone is not in use. The Invisible Gorilla points out how this attention illusion can have real and sometimes harsh results in the real world.
Then the book goes on to describe five other illusions: the illusion of memory, the illusion of knowledge and confidence, the illusion that in a series of events, event one causes event two, and the illusion that certain mythical processes - such as hypnotism - can help one reach their full potential. Another illusion is we can do many things well all at once (multi-tasking); however, experiments have shown this is a false assumption.
The book's key message is that we think our mental abilities and capacities are greater than they really are. Perhaps the largest impact is in court, where witnesses think they can accurately remember an event that occurred some time ago.
I loved this book. It explains so many problems faced in a modern world where information as well as objects are hurled into our lives at breathtaking speed. What is most important is that we stop assuming our minds can process all this whirl without problems. More experiments are necessary to evaluate how our minds work. Understanding our limitations is important to achieving our full potential.
AD2
Warning: This Book May Cause You Not To Trust Yourself ;-) April 10, 2010
Rico
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
I found The Invisible Gorilla to be a fascinating read. It's not only fun to learn about how and why our brains do certain things, but it's even better when you realize that you too could have been an example in many situations. You will learn how and why our memory can not always be fully trusted, as well as how almost everyone takes certain facts and makes many assumptions based upon correlations. The Invisible Gorilla is a real eye opener in many ways, from the laughable way we trust our own memories, to the unfortunate imprisonment of innocent people that are victims of the way our memory works. I can only imagine how many people are serving time or have been executed based primarily upon eye witness accounts. What you will learn in this book is that it is not really the victim or witness' fault, but the way our brain operates. I was really happy to see that the authors touched upon the cellphone while driving issue and gave the reason why even hands free driving is extremely dangerous. I hope that more people will realize the danger and quit using their phones while driving...period!
The Invisible Gorilla is an entertaining book that will teach you many things about yourself and how your mind works. You will start thinking about all the things you honestly "knew" you knew!
This is an important book May 8, 2010
Adam Khan (Seattle, WA USA)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Insights into the fallibility of our own memories and perceptions can improve our lives, reduce depression, help us make better decisions, ease conflicts between people, and lower anxiety.
The authors have exceptional credentials: One has a PhD from Harvard and the other has a PhD from Cornell. And they conducted some the most famous experiments in the history of psychology, including "the invisible gorilla" experiment (check them out here: [...]).
The book is jam-packed with excellent, real-life examples to illustrate the six everyday illusions, and the practical lessons to be drawn from them. One of the illusions, for example, is the illusion of attention. We are unaware of how much we miss, and the unawareness is not self-correcting. The authors write, "The problem is that we lack positive evidence for our lack of attention...We are aware only of the unexpected objects we do notice, not the ones we have missed. Consequently, all the evidence we have is for good perception of our world."
But each illusion is compounded by our unawareness of the illusion itself. "The fact that we don't see everything," they write, "would be far less problematic if we didn't think we see everything."
Although the authors are pointing out the six illusions because they lead to errors in judgment, the illusions also lead to the same thought-mistakes (cognitive distortions) that lead to unnecessary anxiety and depression. The six illusions are the ultimate source of innumerable marital spats and misunderstandings between people. These same illusions are the source of the demoralization that makes people give up on important goals prematurely and fail in school.
The research the authors discuss is relevant to current controversies on the legality of cell phone use while driving. What most people don't realize (and what experiments consistently show) is that you can look right at something and not see it if your attention is on something else (like a cell phone conversation).
And even though many people have recently become aware that talking on a cell phone while driving impairs one's ability to drive (and some states have even passed laws against the use of hand-held phones) what most people have not yet realized is that studies show hands-free phones impair driving just as much! Actually, phones don't impair driving; they impair attention. But drivers are much less likely to see unexpected things and are slower to react even when talking on a hands-free phone.
Another surprising fact is that talking to a passenger sitting next to you in the car doesn't hardly impair your driving ability at all! This book is full of surprising and useful insights like that.
Most of us assume we would see something unexpected if we were looking. It is a mistaken assumption, but something can be done about it. The remedy is to look again and actually look for something unexpected. When participants are warned ahead of time that something unexpected might happen during the gorilla experiment, most of them see it.
The book is filled with one interesting study after another, presented in a way I found interesting and compelling. There is nothing dry or boring in this book. The authors do a good job of connecting what you're reading to many of its real-life applications.
Where were you when you first heard about 9/11? Most people remember vivid details of that day, many of which are mistaken. In several studies of this event memory, the findings were consistent: 1) people had vivid memories they believed were accurate, 2) the more time that elapses, the more those memories change, and 3) their confidence in their own memory's accuracy remains consistently high for significant events, even though their memories are no more accurate for that event than for anything else. And if you are like most people, you won't believe this is true for you, regardless of the studies.
The authors wrote about the "Mozart Effect" at considerable length because it so clearly illustrates a particular cognitive illusion: The illusion of potential. According to the media hype, listening to Mozart can increase your IQ. The authors describe the original experiment and subsequent experiments by researchers trying (unsuccessfully) to duplicate the results.
"The illusion of potential" doesn't mean we cannot grow and change; it means "the idea that there is an easy shortcut" is an illusion. The authors do a good job debunking an aspect of that illusion: The myth that we only use 10% of our brains (see more about that here: [...]).
The book contains so many interesting experiments with surprising, counterintuitive results, I want to tell you about all of them, but I can't. But here's a good example: Subjects watched a video of a bank robber, and then half of them spent five minutes writing a description of the robber's face. The other half spent the same five minutes doing an unrelated task. When asked to select the robber from a lineup, those who wrote the description were much WORSE at identifying the right man!
In another study, researchers found that biking or walking in cities was less dangerous the more common it was in that city. Why? Because where lots of people walk and bike, drivers expect to see them. In places where such things are rare, drivers don't expect them, and therefore often DON'T see them.
Another illusion stems from the fact that our brains are extraordinarily good at recognizing patterns. So good, in fact, that we sometimes see patterns (and attribute meaning) to nothing but random accident. They had some great illustrations of this phenomenon, like the image of the Virgin Mary that appeared on someone's grilled cheese sandwich. "The 'Nun Bun' was a cinnamon pastry whose twisty rolls eerily resembled the nose and jowls of Mother Teresa," the authors wrote. "It was found in a Nashville coffee shop in 1996, but was stolen on Christmas in 2005. 'Our Lady of the Underpass' was another appearance by the Virgin Mary, this time in the guise of a salt stain under Interstate 94 in Chicago that drew huge crowds and stopped traffic for months. Other cases include the Hot Chocolate Jesus, Jesus on a shrimp tail dinner, Jesus in a dental x-ray, and Cheesus (a Cheeto purportedly shaped like Jesus)."
What makes the six illusions dangerous is the mistaken confidence we each have in the accuracy of our own perceptions, memories, and knowledge.
Would you like to be less gullible? More reasonable? Better able to see what's wrong when someone is making their case? Less depressed or anxious? Read the book, The Invisible Gorilla. I hope the book comes out as an audiobook. I'd like to listen to it about ten times! I'm not kidding.
Another excellent book on the same topic is: How We Know What Isn't So, by Thomas Gilovich.
You might think there's nothing sexy or uplifting about a book that basically tells you your memory isn't as good as you think, your abilities are not as great as you hope, and you don't notice as much as you believe. But there are plenty of practical, positive, personal benefits to understanding these illusions, and the authors put one of the best ones in the very last paragraph of their book, which I will end with too:
"When you think about the world with an awareness of everyday illusions, you won't be as sure of yourself as you used to be, but you will have new insights into how your mind works, and new ways of understanding why people act the way they do. Often, it's not because of stupidity, arrogance, ignorance, or lack of focus. It's because of the everyday illusions that affect us all. Our final hope is that you will always consider this possibility before you jump to a harsher conclusion."
"It is surprising how often we really have no clue." April 18, 2010
E. Bukowsky (NY United States)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
The thesis of "The Invisible Gorilla," by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, is that "everyday illusions" influence us in far-reaching ways. The title refers to a famous experiment in which people see what they expect to see and ignore data that is outside of their expectations. Chabris and Simons, in six clearly written and entertaining chapters, discuss the illusions of attention, memory, confidence, knowledge, cause, and potential.
The authors are psychology professors who have "a mutual interest in how we perceive, remember, and think about our visual world." Chabris and Simons approach their subject with humor and humility; they avoid unnecessary jargon and do not claim to have all of the answers. Instead, they present a variety of anecdotes and experimental data to illustrate the many ways in which we fool ourselves. They ask the following: Is it safe to talk on a hands-free cell phone while driving? If a witness carefully memorizes a criminal's face and then states with confidence that this is the person who attacked her, how reliable is her testimony? When a doctor consults a medical book while examining you, should you dismiss her as incompetent? Does showing "Baby Einstein" DVDs to infants make them smarter? Although you may think that you know the answers to these questions, it is far more important to understand the reasons behind the authors' conclusions.
Ironically, even when we accept the fact that our observations are sometimes erroneous, it is surprisingly difficult to change the way we view reality. Our brains are hard-wired through long experience to take shortcuts designed to make our lives run more smoothly. Usually, this does not pose a problem. However, in certain situations, the quick way is not the best way. Sometimes, relying on intuition can make us vulnerable to hucksters, warp our judgment at work, and even cause us to make life-threatening mistakes. Although no work of non-fiction can help us rewire our brains, "The Invisible Gorilla" may make us a bit more conscious of the workings of our minds, enabling us to "view the world differently and think about it more clearly." This is an enlightening and pleasurable read that will appeal to those who are interested in human perception and its limitations.
Interesting, Humbling, Intelligent April 28, 2010
reviewer
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book really made me look at memory entirely differently. On one hand, it makes me much less confident of my own memories. On the other hand, i think that might be a good thing as the memory research presented in this book makes a tremendous argument that our memories are not as accurate as we may think. It has also helped me in not judging others so harshly. When a loved one denies that a conversation or even took place, i remember the research in this book, the gorilla experiment, etc. and am much less likely to be angry at that person and interpret their words as lies. I am much more open to my own errors in memory and perception as well as other peoples. This has made a tremendous shift in my life in the last 4 weeks--on a scale that I would say it is one of the most influential thing for me when it comes to attitudinal change over the last 40 years.
This book sheds a lot of light on the human condition. And very clearly points out that it doesn't matter how intelligent you are, how accurate you perceive your memories, or how traumatic the experience that you remember are--they are all open for larger errors in memory and interpretation
I highly recommend you read this thought provoking book. It will likely change how you view everything.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 69
|
|
|
