The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us

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The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us

3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 · rating details · 3,033 ratings · 291 reviews

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 an...more 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.
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Hardcover, 320 pages

Published May 18th 2010 by Harmony (first published January 1st 2001)

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Sep 13, 2010 Doug rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a mostly fascinating book which discusses the differences between how we imagine that our minds/brains work and how really do. The authors are the psychologists who did the experiment a decade ago using a movie of two teams of people passing basketballs back & forth between them. They asked people to watch the film and count the number of passes between members of the team in white tee-shirts. Then they asked the watchers if they noticed anything unusual about the film. About half th...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Petra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: popular-science-lit

Instead of writing a full review, I'd like to take up some issues with the low-star reviews, which seem to have strong patterns to them that should be adressed. As a disclaimer - I am merely a reader of this book, not a psychological scientist, and I do think negative reviews have their place for ANYTHING that is meant for an audience. And they are important because when reading reviews, you want to know whether the product is something *you* would like to have and may share some of your interes...more Instead of writing a full review, I'd like to take up some issues with the low-star reviews, which seem to have strong patterns to them that should be adressed. As a disclaimer - I am merely a reader of this book, not a psychological scientist, and I do think negative reviews have their place for ANYTHING that is meant for an audience. And they are important because when reading reviews, you want to know whether the product is something *you* would like to have and may share some of your interests with other reviewers. However, bad criticism based on misconceptions or misunderstandings are worth adressing to be fair to those who are considering the product.

1) "There is nothing new in that." That's actually the worst argument against that book I have come by - yes, psychology has a thing for scientifically and statistically proving things an alert, smart person will already have realized and experienced all on their own. However, that same alert mind that already knew these things in the book were scientifically/statistically true before it even read about them, should also be able to realize that there are a LOT of people around that do not know these things (in the legal system, for example!) - and who should REALLY read that book. This argument is actually the best justification for the book - "I SAW this was true before I read the book, because I see the mistakes the people around me make because of these misconceptions." So, obviously, there is yet some need to have such a book. Also - while many people claim they already knew everything in the book, I wonder whether they really were consciously aware of them.

2) ...but those who need to know about these daily illusions of perception will probably say "the book is boring and I couldn't bring myself to read it", like other reviewers here have said. Fair enough, so popular science lit on the workings of the mind isn't your thing. What does that say about the quality of the book, though?

3) It's popular science lit, moreover, psychology-based where proper objective tests are hard to come by. How do you rate a person's humor? Exactly, you can't - and the authors acknowledge it and clearly mention the problem, yet try as best as they can to find a way to measure the social value "humor" by social standards. Complaining about this strategy is like pointing out a tennis player's lack of skill AFTER he said "Okay, I'll try to hit the tennis ball, but this frying pan just isn't perfect for this sport."

4) The complaint that the authors were wrong because they were contradicted by another author is always to be taken with a lot of skepticism. Welcome to science: We disagree to figure things out all the time, results and conclusions are updated, interpretations differ. I will not claim expertise in the field myself, nor say I can judge who is right and who is wrong, but anyone who read the book should know that even expert opinions are to be taken with skepticism. Why should that not be true (and perfectly normal) for this book and any other book on the topic, may they contradict each other or not - and are these common problems within science really a problem with the quality of the book? I find it difficult to measure how much detailed contradictory opinion should be included in popular science lit and how much would simply be confusing to the reader, or give a false sense of the scale of any disagreement within science. It may be quite justified to differ with the authors' choices on the matter, but the complaints I read in reviews are only concerned with the authors being "wrong", not with their lack of inclusion of contradictory opinions.

5) The book is repetitive. Yes, the book lives on example after example to drive the point home - and obviously, some fields in these examples are not entertaining to all readers. I found the anecdotes engaging, mostly BECAUSE they were all different from each other and took on a variety of directions. If I am personally not interested in stock markets - and I am not -, that's actually my problem, but I do appreciate authors who can take their thoughts in all possible directions to engage different kinds of readers. Also, the authors themselves give a warning about anecdotal evidence in the beginning, and the difficulty of obtaining objective evidence on some topics. (see also point 3). The book's contents reflect that, indeed. Maybe it would have been better to write this book 30+ years from now when the evidence is in, but I am actually glad to have it now.

6) Political direction... I read a review complaining that certain political people receive "excuses" in the book, while others don't and that there may be a political bias in the book. I do not see this political coloration. It merely seemed to me like popular examples were used to drive a point home, nothing more. I also don't agree with the assessment who exactly is "excused" and who isn't.

7) No scientist is ever an expert in a broad field. That includes the authors of "The Invisible Gorilla". But they are often more of an expert than most laypeople are because they do read the scientific literature and discuss it. Expecting a scientist to be that much of an expert that he or she has published scientific literature in all the topics needed to make a good popular science literature book is slightly utopic. The best you can do then is to include a variety of experts, lengthening the author list - but not everyone is interested in writing popular science lit, nor is everyone capable of adapting to a specific style for a specific book.

8) Making a movie for scientific purposes that eventually gets famous on youtube and pops up in a couple of news-sources at some point is not making any scientist popular. Claiming "The Invisible Gorilla" got published because that was the authors' claim to fame is at best a red herring.

Lastly, a brief review of my own: "The Invisible Gorilla" is an interesting glimpse at popular and current psychological science that actually has some interesting implications for our daily lives and understanding of each other and ourselves. Sure, the science seems rather "new" at some point (whereas 'new' in science can mean a few decades of research) and the topic is not easy to come by from an objective standpoint, but it would be a pity NOT to have heard of these phenomena. The authors could have reduced the examples and anecdotes, but as they are all neatly sorted and headlined, it is actually pretty easy for readers to skip anything they do not care for and still find a lot they actually do care for. In any case, this is certainly worth reading and thinking - and more importantly - talking about. Many people fall prey to "everyday illusions", and even if you are aware of them, having some amunitiont to point them out to others could lead to some really interesting conversations and prevent a few daily mistakes in your vicinity.(less)

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Jun 11, 2010 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I finished this book much more aware of how limited my mental abilities are. And that's a good thing. As Chabris and Simons state in the conclusion, these mental illusions "result from mistaken judgments about our limitations." If we are willing to acknowledge and accept those limitations we are that much more aware of the illusions and better able to see through them.

Chabris and Simons discuss several commonplace, everyday illusions which the vast majority of us are not only unaware of, but act...more I finished this book much more aware of how limited my mental abilities are. And that's a good thing. As Chabris and Simons state in the conclusion, these mental illusions "result from mistaken judgments about our limitations." If we are willing to acknowledge and accept those limitations we are that much more aware of the illusions and better able to see through them.

Chabris and Simons discuss several commonplace, everyday illusions which the vast majority of us are not only unaware of, but actively believe don't exist. The illusion of attention explains why driving while talking on a cell phone is dangerous and why hands-free sets aren't any safer than hand-held phones - and why so many people talk on their cell phones anyway. The illusion of memory is one I've run across in my own life several times - our memories change over time and even those details of which we are completely sure can be shown to be wrong when compared to others' memories or a video of the event, so how reliable are they, really?

The illusion of confidence has interesting implications for group dynamics and frightening consequences for those accused of crimes by eyewitnesses absolutely sure of what they saw - and absolutely wrong. The illusion of knowledge was particularly striking to me. We don't know what we don't know because "we rarely bother to probe the limits of our knowledge." We assume because we use a toilet everyday that we know how and why one works, but our ability to explain the "whys" breaks down much more quickly than we think it will.

The last two illusions were the weakest chapters for me. After the first four chapters full of interesting revelations about the way the mind works, the illusion of cause was almost disappointing just because it wasn't new. Every high school science class covers the fact that correlation does not mean causation, though there are many people who still have trouble grasping that concept even if they pay lip service to it. Chabris and Simons use the obvious example of the MMR vaccine and autism, complete with references to Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield, to demonstrate this illusion.

The last illusion addressed in the book is the illusion of potential. In my mind, this boiled down to people want simple, guaranteed formulas for weight loss, fading memory, and smart children and so they believe that this pill or mental exercise or Disney DVD will do it for them. Didn't seem all that surprising or earth-shattering to me.

They close the book with only a few suggestions for combating these illusions in the reader's life. First, after a few swipes at Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, "be wary of your intuitions." And second, "You can make better decisions...if you do your best to look for the invisible gorillas in the world around you." In other words, after reading this book you'll be more cognizant that you may not have seen all there is to see, you may not remember exactly what really happened, and you may not know as much as you think you do, especially if you're too confident. Hopefully with that knowledge you can "proactively restructure" your environment (i.e., don't talk on a cell phone while driving and don't assume someone is lying if they misremember what exactly happened at a given event) to take these illusions into account.

The book provides fascinating insights into how the mind works versus how we think it works, and that awareness is valuable in itself. But I would have appreciated a few more suggestions on counteracting these illusions besides "be more aware," "use technology," and "trust science." If goodreads did half stars, this would be a 3.5.

For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.(less)

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Jun 09, 2012 drowningmermaid rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012, read-in-2012-audio, audio, curriculum

There are some pretty major flaws in the experiments he lists as "proof" of his points.

-Deciding whether a person has a "good" or "bad" sense of humor-- based on whether their ratings of jokes correlates with 30 professional comedians? Seriously? Isn't it obvious that the people who score "poorly" are just the kind of people who don't go to comedy clubs, or find the dumb jokes on TV funny?

-There ARE a variety of ways a chess player can be underscored in the ratings. (Although, it is true that 10...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was fascinating and actually had a significant impact on how I think. The authors describe various things scientists are learning about how the human mind works, and then they compare these to how we THINK our minds work, exposing how we humans are vulnerable to a number of different illusions. They discuss...

The illusion of perception - you think you see things more clearly than you really do. You're capable of completely missing very significant visual details (like in one test a gor...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Stephen rated it 2 of 5 stars

So...this book got published because it's by a pair of celebrity scientists (not to say that that affects their other work, but I think it effected the book).

The problem that I see with it, generally, is that they have a very interesting set of experiments about what they call attentional blindness and the illusion of attention. I.e. the reason that a bunch of people didn't notice a gorilla (well, someone in a gorilla suit) walk through a crowd of students passing around basketballs, and why peo...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Mike Vardy rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book offers a lot of discussion and experimentation as to why our experiences are affected by our intuitions. It also offers a lot of acknowledgments to people and footnotes. This is all well and good, but the fact that it offers insight into how you can curb these illusions is the most gratifying conclusion you can expect.

While we can’t completely eliminate these illusions around us, we can “override” them by knowing that they are there — if only for brief moments. Chabris and Simons point...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Ru rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In two words: eye-opening.

The title of this book is derived from an experiment (which readers can take for themselves) that yieled some very surprising results. The readers won't necessarily have the same results, but to the uninitiated who did the experiment originally, many were very surprised to find their observations weren't as accurate as they thought.

There are some well-known examples and case studies within this book that also illustrate just how what we think we know may not be correct...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Bob Nichols rated it 1 of 5 stars

The authors once conducted an experiment where people were asked to count basketballs while another person walked through their field of vision, unnoticed, dressed as a gorilla. The authors concluded that there was an illusion of attention ("inattentional blindness"). They expanded this notion to write this book about the illusions of memory, confidence, knowledge, causal relationships, and potential. Their lesson from all of this is that we need to be wary of our intuitions as they are poorly a...more

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Mar 08, 2012 Deb rated it 5 of 5 stars

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Do you think you would notice if a gorilla ran into a basketball game that you were diligently counting passes for? Think again!

As _The Invisible Gorilla_ reveals, we're all deluded by how capable we think our minds are. We've all been under the spell of believing that our brains' abilities and potentials are far greater than they actually are. The reality is that our minds don't work in the ways we think they do. Our "common sense" results in us intuitively accepting these six everyday illu...more

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Feb 24, 2012 Jessi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: appealing-characteristic-story, audiobook, nonfiction, 2012

This book looks at the things we think we know, but really don't. There are Illusions of Attention, Memory, Confidence, Knowledge, and Potential. Each of the illusions is examined, with examples shown of the differences between what we think happens and what really happens.
Attention-Everyone believes that we see everything that happens in the world around us. This is where the famous Invisible Gorilla video comes into play. Check it out. This is just one example of selective attention. We only...more This book looks at the things we think we know, but really don't. There are Illusions of Attention, Memory, Confidence, Knowledge, and Potential. Each of the illusions is examined, with examples shown of the differences between what we think happens and what really happens.
Attention-Everyone believes that we see everything that happens in the world around us. This is where the famous Invisible Gorilla video comes into play. Check it out. This is just one example of selective attention. We only pay attention to the things we're told to look at. Another example given is when radiologists missed a problematic guidewire after a surgery even though it was prominent in all of their X-Rays. They were only looking for heart problems. We also have inattentional blindness (this is inevitable when we focus on a difficult problem) which can lead us to missing things we don't expect to see. Proof of this is the fact that automobile accidents involving pedestrians and bicycles rise in areas where pedestrians and bicyclists aren't often found. Drivers don't expect to see them, so they don't actively look for them.
Memory-Overwhelmingly, people believe that our memories work like DVDs. We can just watch something over and over in our minds without anything ever changing. We also believe that eyewitnesses are some of the best evidence for convicting people. However, it has been proven time and time again that even the best eyewitnesses can be mistaken. Even experiments tracking people’s memories of traumatic events (the Challenger exploding, 9/11) show that the further you get from the event, the less likely you are to remember specific details. The authors even throw in their own memories as proof.
Confidence-The most confident people are the ones who know their subjects best, right? Wrong. We have been taught to trust the people who seem the most confident but there is rarely a correlation to those who are the most competent. This is why con men are so darn good at getting away with things. They just appear to be confident in their knowledge and no one asks any questions.
Knowledge-Do we really know how the world works? Or we just think we do. The first example given by Chabris and Simons is to think about how a bicycle works. Almost everybody knows that. But try to explain to a five-year-old why moving pedals gets you from here to there and it gets harder to say that you really know what is going on when you hop on a bike. One subset of the Illusion of Knowledge is the Illusion of Cause. We often assume that because two things occur together, there must be a direct cause and effect when often there is a third (or even more) item that may be causing both. The most well-known of these studies is the supposed rate between autism and the MMR vaccine.
Potential-Another illusion is that of potential wherein we believe that the human brain has untapped potential if we only use the right key to unlock it. This belief has lead to the rise of “brain exercise” games. However, it’s interesting to note that recent research has proven that physical exercise may actually play more of a role in how well our brain is faring.

Parts of this book directly address (and refute) Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink wherein the author pushes us to accept our intuition and “go with our guts.” These authors would argue that we should know when we should trust our intuition and when more analyzing would be more beneficial.

Readalikes: Even though the authors dismiss parts of his work, I still think that Malcolm Gladwell’s books are worth reading.
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Jan 25, 2012 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Because I was already familiar with the hidden gorilla experiment demonstrating inattentional blindness, I initially assumed this book would be a rehash. But it delivered a more detailed study of the illusion of attention and six other illusions, and turned out to be an informative source of information on hidden human behavioral patterns. This are:

(1) Illusion of Attention—although we think we see what’s in front of us, focus and expectation leads us to often miss the unexpected, even when it i...more

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Jul 11, 2011 Jeremy rated it 4 of 5 stars

A good read for a plane ride. It puts together several "illusions" that are all related to how our brain works. The authors assemble a mountain of academic research in their field, psychology, and several related ones, and package them into compact, wonderfully written chapters. There are deep insights every couple pages. What is admirable throughout is their rigorous commitment to the scientific method, to questioning their own conclusions, and to limiting and qualifying most of their results....more

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Sep 03, 2010 Julie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction-general

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This was a fascinating book on one of my very favourite topics: why our brains don't work the way we think they do. If you haven't already, check out this video. I, for one, was one of the people who completely missed the gorilla the first time I saw it. (If you've seen this video already, check out this one. Trust me.) The invisible gorilla video is an example of the first of six "everyday illusions" Chabris and Simons discuss in their book. In the same way that optical illusions trick us into...more

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Aug 16, 2010 Richard Williams rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: best-reads, library, science

illusions of attention, memory, confidence, knowledge, cause, potential. excellent well organized, informative, important book.

each chapter is an illusion caused by our mental structures, like optical illusions effect our perception, a must read for anyone interested in clearer thinking, which ought to be everyone.

each chapter presents an illusion, like the gorilla in the basketball passings video. presents the illusion, then using experimental results and interesting examples shows us what the...more

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Aug 01, 2010 Victoria Klein rated it 4 of 5 stars

Do you ever feel like your mind is playing tricks on you?

You’re not crazy – your instincts are deceiving you (those bastards).

My latest rental from the library, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, provides a jaw-droppingly fascinating perspective into mental illusions that influence our every word, action, and thought.

Chabris & Simons, both established cognitive psychologists, are best known for their “Gorillas in Our Mids...more Do you ever feel like your mind is playing tricks on you?

You’re not crazy – your instincts are deceiving you (those bastards).

My latest rental from the library, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, provides a jaw-droppingly fascinating perspective into mental illusions that influence our every word, action, and thought.

Chabris & Simons, both established cognitive psychologists, are best known for their “Gorillas in Our Midst” study (click the link to try it for yourself!). Their gorilla study (and namesake for the book) is used to illustrate the first of 6 everyday illusions: the illusion of attention. In subsequent chapters, the other 5 illusions are explained in detail: memory, confidence, knowledge, cause, & potential.

What we intuitively accept and believe is derived from what we collectively assume and understand, and intuition influences our decisions automatically and without reflection. Intuition tells us that we pay attention to more than we do, that our memories are more detailed and robust than they are, that confident people are competent people, that we know more that we really do, that coincidences and correlations demonstrate causation, and that our brains have vast reserves of power that are easy to unlock. But in all these cases, our intuitions are wrong, and they can cost us our fortunes, our health, and even our lives if we follow them blindly. — Page 231

Admittedly, the book may sound like a bit of a downer, but I found it to be extremely intriguing. Included with the extensive explanation of each illusion, Chabris & Simons provide straightforward info on how to break these illusions for yourself. As you might expect, the key is to stop & think before you speak or act, ensuring you are acting from a perspective from of misconceptions.

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. — Page 242

If you have a curiosity for psychology & the instinctual functions of the human mind, I’m quite sure you will enjoy The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us as much as I did.(less)

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Jul 11, 2010 Bruce rated it 3 of 5 stars

Clear headed look at a number of flaws in the human brain's wiring. "Flaw" is clearly a loaded term - more specifically, in the context of modern society, the human brain gets a number of things (objectively) wrong. For those with a lot of familiarity with similar literature, there isn't a whole lot new here. Another problem is that the book bogs down with lengthy discussion of specific issues (e.g. the science pertaining to vaccinations, the effect of video games on cognitive ability, specific...more

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Jun 27, 2010 Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorite, non-fiction, books-i-own

This is an awesome book. I loved the part about the illusion of memory, I loved the part where they warned about correlation becoming causation, and I loved the part about the gorilla experiment. The authors tried to stay neutral on issues like religion in this book, but lots of what was said in this book reminds me of Caveman Logic.

Awesome quote:
"Parents and scientists seeking a cause for the increase in autism rates spotted this association [between vaccinations and autism:] and inferred a ca...more

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Oct 06, 2010 David Everling rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A book on the psychology of intuition and perception. Thematically similar to "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell, but their conclusions don't often agree.

While The Invisible Gorilla has plenty of informative passages, thoroughly evaluating contemporary psychology myths in each part, the book's necessarily negative overtone (subtitled "And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us") makes it somewhat dissatisfying as a whole despite valid insights. The book has to be cynical because its unique angle is in it...more

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Oct 06, 2012 Alex marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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 research

...more

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Jun 24, 2011 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

Basically, question: how much you're actually paying attention to your surroundings, how accurate your memories really are, how much your confidence in your abilities really reflects your actual abilities, how much you really know about what you think you know (do you know how a bicycle works? explain it), whether two things happening in sequence are a indication of correlation instead of causation, and whether learning a particular task affects your abilities in other areas (does doing a crossw...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Esther rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

This book took me down a couple notches. According to Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, I miss a heckuva lot that's going on right in front of my nose, and come to conclusions based on my own state of mind rather than the facts. The book sets out to debunk 6 or so everyday illusions - attention, knowledge, memory,confidence, cause, and potential. In the process it takes down a lot of commonly held beliefs (eg. doing crossword puzzles increases your brain power for other areas of life, or th...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Feistytiger rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I do enjoy reading social psychology books, and know a little on this topic before i picked this up. However I did learn a fair bit from this book and it was insightful to the topics it portrayed. It backed each point up with case studies and insights, which helped you grasp each concept they showed.

It was written in an accessible manner (some of these types of books can be a bit hit and miss) but i got into the writing style and could fully understand what they were trying to say. Like any soc...more

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Aug 13, 2010 Barry rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: american, non-fiction

If perceptions and illusions intrigue you, this is the book for you. I’m fascinated by the subject. These books seem to be tricky to write. In order to be credible, the author ought to have a grounding in social sciences, which tends to burden them with the curse of academia. Making the switch a breezy, anecdotal style from the torpor of scholarly writing is like hopping into a roadster from a big rig. Stories are another problem. They should be compelling and fresh. If one spends years assembli...more If perceptions and illusions intrigue you, this is the book for you. I’m fascinated by the subject. These books seem to be tricky to write. In order to be credible, the author ought to have a grounding in social sciences, which tends to burden them with the curse of academia. Making the switch a breezy, anecdotal style from the torpor of scholarly writing is like hopping into a roadster from a big rig. Stories are another problem. They should be compelling and fresh. If one spends years assembling relatable examples, the material often feels like a stale comedian. After a few “What’s the deal with airplane food?” jokes, we cease to listen, no matter how good the delivery.

So the good news is that The Invisible Gorilla is (mostly) very fresh and funny and appropriate. It covers a lot of ground, so intense devotees of cognitive psychology may be disappointed, but the examples are usually succinct and precise. They conclusively demolish former Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy’s assertion that vaccines cause autism. Admittedly, it’s not a hard target to hit, but it’s nicely done. They also take on Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, which is a more intimidating target. Gladwell is revered in some circles and I’m sure they’ll take issue with Chabris and Simons’s sniping. I haven’t read Blink, but their comments made sense to me.

The book also offers plausible explanations of Hillary Clinton’s Bosnian misremembrance during the 2008 campaign and George W. Bush’s recollection of the 9/11 events. This will vex fans of Fox News commentators and 9/11 conspiracy theorists, but it rings true and echoes some of my experiences. In general, I found most of their observations to be reasonable.

Some may be distressed to learn that pop psychology, and hucksters, have bestowed an “illusion of potential.” This is the belief that “vast reservoirs of untapped mental ability exist in our brains, just waiting to be accessed.” Hence the “Baby Einstein” videos, playing classical music to make us smarter, and the belief that we only use ten percent of our mental capacity. All myths. I didn’t see the book as pessimistic. Better to be forewarned.

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Aug 30, 2011 Nick rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is a guided tour through six everyday illusions (attention, memory, knowledge, confidence, cause, and potential) that are all directly related to the human desire to pretend it has things more under control than it actually does. While many of the examples are fascinating (the widely-believed but erroneous Mozart Effect, scientifically unjustified fears about vaccinations, the crappiness of flashbulb memory and what it means for eyewitness testimony, how talking on a cellphone wrecks y...more

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Jun 21, 2011 Ryan Adair rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: pyschology, science

This book was really fun at points, but also extremely laborious at other points. Each chapter is a very detailed, thoroughly footnoted analysis of ways our intuitions deceive us. Both authors come from an intensely scientific point of view, being immensely analytical in their thought processes. Though I didn’t agree with them on all points, it was still a very good and insightful read.

The book is built around the six different ways our intuitions deceive us—the illusion of attention, the illus...more This book was really fun at points, but also extremely laborious at other points. Each chapter is a very detailed, thoroughly footnoted analysis of ways our intuitions deceive us. Both authors come from an intensely scientific point of view, being immensely analytical in their thought processes. Though I didn’t agree with them on all points, it was still a very good and insightful read.

The book is built around the six different ways our intuitions deceive us—the illusion of attention, the illusion of memories, the illusion of confidence, the illusion of knowledge, the illusion of cause, and finally the illusion of potential. Each chapter points out how we are deceived by these illusions, making us increasingly aware of our shortcomings, but very little of the book says how we can defeat these illusions.

It was only on page 239 (in the Conclusion) that the authors finally bring it all home, giving us three “broad approaches that might lessen the impact of these illusions in our lives.”

Here are the three approaches:

“First, simply learning how everyday illusions work—for example, by reading this book—will help you notice and avoid being victimized by them in the future.” They get an A+ with this, doing it superbly well.

“Second, you could try to enhance your cognitive abilities through training.” This is a good point, though if you haven’t read the book, they are not meaning exercising your mind by doing Sudoku puzzles as one might commonly think.

Thirdly, they write, “Technology holds promise as a helpful tool to avoid everyday illusions....” Then they go on to inform the reader about the calculator and the invention of writing.

If this sounds like they are pointing out a problem more than giving an answer, they you are hearing correctly. They do state that their message was to be one of negativity: “Be wary of your intuitions, especially intuitions about how your own mind works” (241).

But they also have a positive message to leave us with: “You can make better decisions, and maybe even live a better life, if you do your best to look for the invisible gorillas in the world around you....There may be important things right in front of you that you aren’t noticing due to the illusion of attention...” (241). (less)

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Apr 20, 2011 Mardel Fehrenbach rated it 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes I wonder if I just happen to read books in a particular order, or if the connections my mind makes between books I read and the general thoughts and themes of my life at any given moment are just a grand illusion, a construct of the mind geared at making sense of the world.

The Invisible Gorilla is a very interesting book which addresses just this issue, along with others. As you can probably infer from the title, the authors are the psychologists who ran that now rather well-known expe...more Sometimes I wonder if I just happen to read books in a particular order, or if the connections my mind makes between books I read and the general thoughts and themes of my life at any given moment are just a grand illusion, a construct of the mind geared at making sense of the world.

The Invisible Gorilla is a very interesting book which addresses just this issue, along with others. As you can probably infer from the title, the authors are the psychologists who ran that now rather well-known experiment where the participants either noticed, or failed to notice, a person in a gorilla suit walking through a basketball court while two teams of players were passing balls back and forth between them. But there is more to this book than just this particular experiment and this particular illusion, the illusion of attention. The book addresses the way we think our brains work, and therefore to some extent the way we think the world works, and how we deceive ourselves into thinking we are more in control of our brains and by extension the world than is actually the case.

I think the book is well balanced between the stories used to illustrate the points and the research being discussed. The authors also make some very good points, tackling a host of popular and recent targets covering a wide range of situations and cover them well. Some of the points made are likely to make any reader reconsider previously held opinions. And this, I believe is what I like about the book the most. It has made me realize that I should perhaps be less hard on myself as well as perhaps be a bit less self-secure and judgemental concerning the "mistakes" and actions of others. After all, our brains have gotten us where we are, whether one deems that good or ill, so perhaps we should not be all too hard on them. Despite the wording of the title, I am not sure our brains actually deceive us, but more that we deceive ourselves in our search for meaning and security and control, just as I deceive myself finding patterns where there are none.
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Jan 01, 2011 Harry Robinson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I remember seeing this experiment on tv: you're watching a couple of groups of people throwing basketballs. You're asked to count the number passes made by the players in white. As you are diligently counting, a person in a gorilla suit walks across the screen. The real question being asked is not how many passes were made, but simply "did you notice the gorilla?" A surprising number of people got the count of passes correct, but did not see the gorilla.

This book is by the authors of the above t...more

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Sep 10, 2012 Mohamed Al Marzouqi rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: أخرى

The book seeks to tackle 6 common illusions that deeply influence our lives. They are the illusions of attention, memory, confidence, knowledge, cause, and potential. For each illusion, the authors provide a number of interesting stories that are supported by extensive studies and research.

The name of the book comes from one of the most famous psychological experiments ever. This experiment, conducted by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, involved asking participants to watch a video in whi...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Evan Wondrasek rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book contained some great fact-based studies of how human memory works, and mainly how fallible our memory actually is. It can be sort of depressing I suppose, but the main point of this book is to help you identify several illusions we encounter in day-to-day activities regarding our own perception, memory, and attentiveness, and how we can become more aware of those things to improve our lives. The big picture: our memory really sucks, but if you're aware of it, you can take defensive ste...more

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