Jacquetta.Mcclurefk

Emotions and Decision Making

Memory and cognition are far more susceptible to external factors than we think. For example, when an airport ticket inspector deliberately dropped something on the floor and bent down to pick it up, leaning over behind the ticket counter, another staff member took over and continued to inspect the ticket, the researcher asked the travelers and most answered that they did not notice the change of ticket inspector. In another study, subjects were asked to count the number of times a player in a white jersey appeared on a videotape, and most were able to say exactly how many times, but only 42 percent of the subjects noticed a more striking image: a person dressed in a black gorilla pattern walking to the center of the screen, beating his chest for a while and then walking away. More than half of the subjects focused only on the task given to them, not noticing a gorilla standing right in front of them! What kind of gorilla is walking by in your field of vision right now that you are blind to?