A dumbfounding study roughly a decade ago that many now find hard to believe revealed that if people are asked to focus on a video of other people passing basketballs, about half of watchers missed a person in a gorilla suit walking in and out of the scene thumping its chest.
Now research delving further into this effect shows that people who know that such a surprising event is likely to occur are no better at noticing other unforeseen events – and may even be worse at noticing them – than others who aren’t expecting the unexpected.
The so-called “invisible gorilla” test had volunteers watching a video where two groups of people – some dressed in white, some in black – are passing basketballs around. The volunteers were asked to count the passes among players dressed in white while ignoring the passes of those in black.
