Inattentional blindness is the failure to notice something in plain sight, often due to focusing on a specific task or stimulus. This phenomenon has implications for human perception in various contexts, including medical errors and car crashes. Factors such as the color and pattern of the stimulus, mental workload, expectation, and individual ability can all contribute to inattentional blindness.
Inattentional blindness is the inability to perceive something in plain sight. This psychological phenomenon was most famously illustrated in an oft-repeated experiment that asked students to view a video and count the number of times a group of basketball players passed the ball. Focusing on this task, most study participants completely missed the fact that a person in a gorilla suit walked into the field, danced, and then walked off mid-activity. This has significant implications for human perception in a variety of contexts, explaining why incidents such as medical errors, car crashes, and other events occur even though people should have seen a threat and reacted to it.
Numerous explanations have been put forward to explore inattentional blindness and how it works. In these situations, people fail to perceive a stimulus that is directly in front of them and fully visible. In both experimental and real-life settings, they report nothing unusual after the crash. Drivers, for example, may say that a cyclist “came out of nowhere” when video evidence indicates that the bicycle was in full view of the driver at all times.
One problem is the evidence, as psychologists say, of the target. Brightly colored or patterned things tend to attract more attention, which is why road workers wear bright orange vests to make sure they’re visible. In cases of inattentional blindness, it is common for the stimulus to be dully colored or patterned, which can make seeing more difficult. Mental workload is another factor. Someone who is focusing intently on a task may miss stimuli that do not appear to be related to that task.
This has been demonstrated in a number of experimental settings, where participants fail to see bears walking on the moon, fierce fights, and other events because they are asked to focus on something else. Focusing on one type of visual stimulus can overload the brain so that it doesn’t notice the others. In real environments like a car, this could be a serious problem. The driver looking for a specific exit sign on the highway, for example, may not notice a car ahead braking hard or a vehicle about to change lanes.
Expectation has also been documented as a player in inattentive blindness. People tend to see what they expect to see; people watching a basketball game don’t expect someone to be wearing a gorilla suit, so they gloss over when that happens. Inattention blindness researchers have also explored the role of individual ability, which can vary widely. Some people may be more alert and able to handle complex visual stimuli, while others are not due to fatigue, age, vision problems or other factors.
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