Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself—and that’s a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chab...
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Sep 16, 2010
Doug
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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
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Jan 25, 2012
David
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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, More...
(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, More...
Jul 11, 2011
Jeremy
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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 t
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Sep 03, 2010
Julie
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Aug 16, 2010
Richard
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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 example More...
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 example More...
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Aug 01, 2010
Victoria
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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 More...
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 More...
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Jul 11, 2010
Bruce
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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 abili
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Jun 27, 2010
Michelle
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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 aut More...
Awesome quote:
"Parents and scientists seeking a cause for the increase in autism rates spotted this association [between vaccinations and aut More...
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Oct 06, 2010
David
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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 b More...
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 b More...
Jun 24, 2011
Jessica
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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
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Jan 22, 2011
Esther
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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
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Aug 13, 2010
Barry
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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 as
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Aug 30, 2011
Nick
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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
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Jun 21, 2011
Ryan
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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 attentio More...
The book is built around the six different ways our intuitions deceive us—the illusion of attentio More...
Apr 20, 2011
Mardel
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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 rathe More...
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 rathe More...
Jan 08, 2011
Harry
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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 t More...
This book is by t More...
Jun 11, 2010
Emily
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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 More...
Chabris and Simons discuss several commonplace, everyday illusions which the vast majority of us are not More...
Jul 04, 2010
Betty410
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Reading this was a little like going back to school in a psychology course. It was done by citing various studies regarding the illusions we have about our own mental abilitdies. The examples were most demonstrative and often entertaining in the way they challenged the reader to also take the "test".
Highlighted were the illusions of Attention ( why did you not see the motorcycle when you turned in front of it?) of Memory (we don't remember what we think we do) of Confidence, of More...
Highlighted were the illusions of Attention ( why did you not see the motorcycle when you turned in front of it?) of Memory (we don't remember what we think we do) of Confidence, of More...
Sep 29, 2011
Scott
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A very enjoyable book that presents several common illusions about how the mind works -- illusions that appear to be common sense. The authors effectively skewer the myth of multi-tasking from the very outset, proving that you cannot effectively pay attention to two things at once.
Even more interesting, from my perspective as an insurance fraud investigator, is the discussion of how our memories are not as accurate as we would like to think, even our memories of notable incidents s More...
Even more interesting, from my perspective as an insurance fraud investigator, is the discussion of how our memories are not as accurate as we would like to think, even our memories of notable incidents s More...
Nov 25, 2011
Cassandra
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This sociological take on Intuition and other every day illusions was pretty interesting. He takes a firm stand against intuition in general which is not a very Oprah thing to do so I am not sure how I feel about that. I mean I have some faith in intuition, apparently according to this author that is completely unfounded. Also it turns out that letting my non existent child listen to Mozart is not currently making him or her smarter, and that's a real let down, let me tell you. I can hear my non
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Jan 18, 2011
Void
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A surprisingly good book about the flaws in our ways of thinking, seeing and the way we think about the way we think. The research and information is quite shocking and more than interesting, and i particularly liked how it even stated out some problems I had for a while seen with a number of the popular business books, especially in these days when it's so fashionable to praise an intuitive leader over a rational one. Warmly recommending it to anybody who wants to improve their thinking/seeing/
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Oct 28, 2010
Karen
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Fascinating book that studies how perception works and comes up with some unexpected conclusions.
This is a subject that's fascinated me for a long time, so I did find a few places where I was skipping past stuff I already knew, but that just shows how well grounded it is. The important thing with this book is that everything they say is backed up with experimentation. In fact one of the cornerstones of the whole thesis is that you can only find out how something works by testing it w More...
This is a subject that's fascinated me for a long time, so I did find a few places where I was skipping past stuff I already knew, but that just shows how well grounded it is. The important thing with this book is that everything they say is backed up with experimentation. In fact one of the cornerstones of the whole thesis is that you can only find out how something works by testing it w More...
Mar 03, 2011
Sandra
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Another really appealing nonfiction book. This one reveals the limits of our judgments: real problems with trusting our observation, our judgments of others and of ourselves and our abilities and what really influences these judgments and observations. The title comes from the famous experiment: people are shown a video of people playing basketball and told to count the number of passes made by the team in white. In the middle of the basketball action, a girl in a gorilla suit weaves through
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May 07, 2011
Marc
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Yet another book trying to capitalize on Malcolm Gladwell's success, these authors ostensibly look at hidden influences in our life. This is a bit of a stretch--essentially they tried to find a common unifying theme and couldn't quite do so--but the information they share is interesting. Much like the book Sway, the difficulty is in finding a way to make this information relevant to our lives. Gladwell doesn't seem to care so much about doing this--his books are more informational than transform
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May 30, 2011
Emily
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First, go watch the short video of the original experiment the authors performed. It's the first video at this link: http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/video...
I picked up this book after watching that video, and the book didn't disappoint. It's a reasonably in depth look at just how unreliable our perceptions actually are, and how we fool ourselves into believing we know more than we actually do. I got the impression that the authors expected the reader to be rather more surprised a More...
I picked up this book after watching that video, and the book didn't disappoint. It's a reasonably in depth look at just how unreliable our perceptions actually are, and how we fool ourselves into believing we know more than we actually do. I got the impression that the authors expected the reader to be rather more surprised a More...
Jan 24, 2012
Isis
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An entertaining and thought-provoking book about the gap between how we assume our brains work, and how our brains actually (appear to) work. Although I've seen this book compared to Blink (which the authors mention explicitly, and disparagingly) it reminded me more of Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Both books look at situations in which things happen or people behave in different ways than we naively expect them to, and then explore the reasons for the
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Jun 06, 2010
Ann
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Excellent book on the way we think we see more than we see, think we remember more than we remember, think we understand things that we don't, and think we're capable of things we aren't. The conclusions aren't very comforting, but the book makes an obvious case for why it is so important for us to understand our limitations. This isn't to say that it's a depressing book either. It's written with good humor and fascinating case studies.
I like cognitive psychology, so I've heard More...
I like cognitive psychology, so I've heard More...
Aug 14, 2011
Illusion of attention (e.g. nuclear submarine sinks fishing boat), illusion of confidence (e.g. memory may not be accurate), illusion of knowledge (beware of those that appear too confident), illusion of knowledge (e.g. brain porn), illusion of cause (jumping to conclusion re: causality), and the illusion of potential (beware of claims of easy, fast means to tap unused potential).
The authors suggest "take any opportunity you find to pause and observe human behavior through the lenses we've More...
The authors suggest "take any opportunity you find to pause and observe human behavior through the lenses we've More...
Dec 14, 2010
Mark
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"In the world of Harry Potter the one thing you don't want to be is a "muggle". Muggles are the regular folk lacking magical powers, and discrimination and prejudice against them is rampant. Muggles are not merely unable to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but are kept ignorant of the school's very existence. In fact, muggles are kept in the dark about the entire cryptic world of magic altogether. The sorcerers struggle for the heart and soul of humankind's freed
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Feb 02, 2011
Ken
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This book makes you question what you truly know and what you think you know. It shows how your mind can play tricks on you through a series of stories and anecdotes, such as a rape victim who erroneously testify against a man that she was confident was the rapist or why we fail to see things that happen right in front of our eyes.
The book is divided into 6 chapters that describe attention, knowledge, memory, confidence, cause and potential and goes on to debunk our most held believes More...
The book is divided into 6 chapters that describe attention, knowledge, memory, confidence, cause and potential and goes on to debunk our most held believes More...
