We do not see what we do not expect to see. Psychologists call this inattentional blindness. It’s about gorillas. In the late 1990s, psychologists conducted the now famous study where a significant majority of people instructed to count ball passes in an impromptu basketball game, failed to spot a pantomime gorilla wandering into frame.
It is a common reaction when told about such studies that people find it hard to swallow. However, most of us I feel confident in saying they would know if they had a gorilla inside them. Except it seems, radiologists. In a study of 24 radiologists, they were asked to scroll through five CT scans of lungs searching for nodules across between 100-500 frames.
The final scan was modified, so an image of a gorilla emerged and disappeared near a prominent nodule over five of the frames – 20 of the 24 radiologists failed to spot the gorilla. However, they did better than a group untrained in radiology where no one spotted the gorilla.
Trained radiologists were much better at spotting the gorilla on a CT scan. Credit:Fairfax Photographic
What such studies show so dramatically is not the shape-shifting shiftiness of gorillas, but rather the commonly overlooked but critical flaw in goal setting. The whole point of setting a goal is to direct our attention, and therefore our efforts towards some pre-defined future state. The purpose of the goal is to close the gap between where we are and where we believe success lies.
If the world was a simple unchanging place, such strategies may be usefully employed. If we find ourselves in very constrained and controlled environments, perhaps a well-run prison with staff and inmates who all obey all the rules, goals may be effective.
Over very short time periods, where there is little opportunity for anything to change, goals may be successful. Unfortunately for goal-setters, most of us are not well-behaved prisoners or warders. We must get by in that messy, relatively unconstrained place called the real world.
Illustration: Dionne GainCredit:
Despite occupying a very privileged existence where I am relatively insulated from the vagaries of the world, in the last 18 months I have been confined to barracks along with everyone else due to COVID, obliged to spend Christmas alone as I was on the wrong side of the bridge (COVID again) and seen my neighbours literally swimming in the road past my front door during the recent floods.
And as I said, I am relatively insulated from some slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
