The Invisible Gorilla

You would be wrong.

In a now-famous psychology experiment from the late 1990s, University of Illinois professor Daniel Simons and his collaborator Christopher Chabris filmed two teams of college students — three in white shirts, three in black — passing a basketball. Viewers are asked to count how many times the white team passes the ball. About halfway through, a person in a full life-sized gorilla suit walks calmly across the stage.

After the video ends, the audience is asked: did you see it? About half didn’t.

The experiment has been replicated thousands of times. Men or women, high IQ or low, detail-oriented or creative, young or old — the result is always the same. I watched it myself. I would have testified in court there was no gorilla. The neuroscience is now well understood: the brain, overwhelmed with input, selectively ignores most of what the eyes actually see. It’s called inattentional blindness. When you’re focused on one thing, you will miss other things — including large, obvious ones.

Simons followed up in 2010, showing the video to audiences who already knew about the gorilla — but with subtle new changes added. Even knowing to look, 80% of viewers missed the changes entirely. If you’re focused on finding one thing, you’ll miss something else.

The implications for your organization:

About half the time, you and your team will not see things that are right in front of them. Not abstract concepts — real, obvious things. This is normal human neurology, not negligence.

So: what are you missing? What is your team missing? And how do you react when a staff member doesn’t see something that seems obvious to you? If the answer is frustration or impatience — what does that do to your culture?

Run the video at your next team meeting. You’ll be amazed at what happens.