Selective Attention/ Invisible Gorilla Experiment: See Through Your Focus – Academy 4SC Learning Hub

December 29, 2025

https://learn.academy4sc.org/video/selective-attention-invisible-gorilla-experiment-see-through-your-focus/#:~:text=The%20study%20was%20conducted%20in,a%20gorilla%20thumping%20its%20chest. QT:{{” The study was conducted in 1999 at Harvard University. It involved a short video of people in white t-shirts and black t-shirts passing a basketball to people in the same colored shirt. Participants were asked to watch this video and count the number of passes the white team made. Most could correctly list the number of passes and thought it was a relatively easy task. Yet despite this, over half of the participants failed to notice a person in a gorilla suit walk between the basketball players, stand and face the camera, bang their chest, and walk offscreen.

This goes against nearly everyone’s intuition: we’d expect to be able to spot such an obvious occurrence. Yet repeated studies have gathered similar results: we aren’t as observant as we like to think. If we don’t expect to see something, odds are we won’t notice it. Selective attention has its benefits, but it can cause you to miss out on something as obvious as a gorilla thumping its chest.
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