The Invisible Gorilla
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Review
"Entertaining and illuminating"
Dan Ariely, New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational
"A riveting romp across the landscape of our psychological misperceptions."
Nicholas A. Christakis, Professor, Harvard Medical School
"This book will delight all who seek depth and insight into the wonder and complexities of cognition"
Jerome Groopman, Recanati Professor, Harvard Medical School
"breathtaking and insightful"
Richard Wiseman, author of Quirkology
"Like its authors, the book is both funny and smart"
Joseph T. Hallinan, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Why We Make Mistakes
"incredibly engaging…a must-read"
Elizabeth Loftus, author of Memory and Eyewitness Testimony
"engaging, accurate and packed with real-world examples - some of which made me laugh out loud"
Sandra Aamodt, co-author of Welcome To Your Brain
"not just witty and engaging, but also insightful"
Thomas W. Malone, author of The Future of Work and founder of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
"The Invisible Gorilla should be required reading by every judge and jury member in our criminal justice system, along with every battlefield commander, corporate CEO, and, well, you and I"
Michael Shermer, Publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of Why People Believe Weird Things
"Clever, illuminating, by turns shocking and delightful, this book will change a lot of your bad habits and could even save your life"
Margaret Heffernan, CEO and author of Women on Top
Review
"Entertaining and illuminating" Dan Ariely, New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational "A riveting romp across the landscape of our psychological misperceptions." Nicholas A. Christakis, Professor, Harvard Medical School "This book will delight all who seek depth and insight into the wonder and complexities of cognition" Jerome Groopman, Recanati Professor, Harvard Medical School "breathtaking and insightful" Richard Wiseman, author of Quirkology "Like its authors, the book is both funny and smart" Joseph T. Hallinan, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Why We Make Mistakes "incredibly engaging!a must-read" Elizabeth Loftus, author of Memory and Eyewitness Testimony "engaging, accurate and packed with real-world examples - some of which made me laugh out loud" Sandra Aamodt, co-author of Welcome To Your Brain "not just witty and engaging, but also insightful" Thomas W. Malone, author of The Future of Work and founder of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence "The Invisible Gorilla should be required reading by every judge and jury member in our criminal justice system, along with every battlefield commander, corporate CEO, and, well, you and I" Michael Shermer, Publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of Why People Believe Weird Things "Clever, illuminating, by turns shocking and delightful, this book will change a lot of your bad habits and could even save your life" Margaret Heffernan, CEO and author of Women on Top
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
When my gran was in her 70s, she stepped into the road in front of a car. They were both going slowly, and my gran was knocked over but OK.
When she got up she shouted, "It was a hit and run!".
"No, it was me, I'm here and I'm really sorry," said the woman who had driven the car.
"It was a blue car!" shouted my gran.
"No, it's white, it's right here, it's mine," said the distraught driver.
"It came from nowhere!" said my gran.
"No, I was just turning out of this street. You looked right at me," said the woman.
The police did not press charges, which was fair enough.
We like to think our memories are reliable, even as we grow older and joke about forgetting why we came into a room and having to go back and start again. We also like to think that our observational skills are reliable. The Invisible Gorilla proves that we aren't anywhere near as reliable as we think we are. Our brains don't simply record like video cameras, they interpret, and more importantly they miss huge chunks out.
The Invisible Gorilla is one of those science books that's so fascinating that you forget it's about science. I mean that nicely. (Why can't more schoolbooks be like this? We'd all end up better educated.) It's a great read, essential for everyone who is interested in how our brains really work. It should also be on the compulsory reading list for everyone involved in the law because it shows that witnesses are unreliable. No matter how well they think they observed a scene, they are pretty much guaranteed to have got it wrong. Do read it, because it will make you question the way you see the world, and that's always a good thing.
When she got up she shouted, "It was a hit and run!".
"No, it was me, I'm here and I'm really sorry," said the woman who had driven the car.
"It was a blue car!" shouted my gran.
"No, it's white, it's right here, it's mine," said the distraught driver.
"It came from nowhere!" said my gran.
"No, I was just turning out of this street. You looked right at me," said the woman.
The police did not press charges, which was fair enough.
We like to think our memories are reliable, even as we grow older and joke about forgetting why we came into a room and having to go back and start again. We also like to think that our observational skills are reliable. The Invisible Gorilla proves that we aren't anywhere near as reliable as we think we are. Our brains don't simply record like video cameras, they interpret, and more importantly they miss huge chunks out.
The Invisible Gorilla is one of those science books that's so fascinating that you forget it's about science. I mean that nicely. (Why can't more schoolbooks be like this? We'd all end up better educated.) It's a great read, essential for everyone who is interested in how our brains really work. It should also be on the compulsory reading list for everyone involved in the law because it shows that witnesses are unreliable. No matter how well they think they observed a scene, they are pretty much guaranteed to have got it wrong. Do read it, because it will make you question the way you see the world, and that's always a good thing.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
...can be astonishingly different. What is more, being quite confident and sure of what you have seen is no guarantee that you are right.
Our ability to miss what is right in front of our noses is a 'normal' part of human perception. Despite that, it's a part most of us are utterly oblivious too. People have gone to prison because juries can't believe the defendant failed to miss something "so obvious". People have gone to prison because witnesses have been so certain of their memories. And yet both of these can be completely wrong.
This book, written in a very readable manner but grounded firmly in evidence, will open your eyes to how your (and everyone else's) brain works. It is genuinely an interesting read, so don't be put off if you feel you aren't "scientifically minded". The authors write with ordinary people in mind - and for ordinary people it is an eye-opening education indeed. Most of us can recall times when we missed something - the "car that came from nowhere" at a junction we narrowly missed hitting and so on. It is really deeply interesting to understand what is going on that allows that to happen. Indeed, not only is it interesting but by bringing this aspect of human cognition to our attention, the authors hope and intend that it may make us at least a little less vulnerable in the future. (And maybe also more understanding of apparently "unbelievable" lapses in memory or awareness in other people).
A very readable glimpse into how our minds work aimed at the "ordinary" reader.
Our ability to miss what is right in front of our noses is a 'normal' part of human perception. Despite that, it's a part most of us are utterly oblivious too. People have gone to prison because juries can't believe the defendant failed to miss something "so obvious". People have gone to prison because witnesses have been so certain of their memories. And yet both of these can be completely wrong.
This book, written in a very readable manner but grounded firmly in evidence, will open your eyes to how your (and everyone else's) brain works. It is genuinely an interesting read, so don't be put off if you feel you aren't "scientifically minded". The authors write with ordinary people in mind - and for ordinary people it is an eye-opening education indeed. Most of us can recall times when we missed something - the "car that came from nowhere" at a junction we narrowly missed hitting and so on. It is really deeply interesting to understand what is going on that allows that to happen. Indeed, not only is it interesting but by bringing this aspect of human cognition to our attention, the authors hope and intend that it may make us at least a little less vulnerable in the future. (And maybe also more understanding of apparently "unbelievable" lapses in memory or awareness in other people).
A very readable glimpse into how our minds work aimed at the "ordinary" reader.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
The authors demonstrate how experimentation can illuminate mental processes and come up with both surprising and useful results, and they do so in an engaging and accessible style.
The book starts out with the phenomenon referred to in the title, and which the authors are best-known for, i.e. the Invisible Gorilla experiment. This has become well-known but I won't describe it in case the reader has not experienced the phenomenon. Richard Wiseman has a nice video demonstrating it. This is perhaps the most striking example of how we can deceive ourselves and be over-confident in our judgement of what we see, remember or know. In all there are six chapters, each dealing with a different 'everyday illusion' to which we are susceptible.
My personal favourites were the last two chapters, which consider why people continue to believe in notions such as the damaging effect of MMR vaccination, or the beneficial effects of brain training for the elderly. Sceptics tend to dismiss those who persist such beliefs in the face of negative evidence, and denigrate them as stupid and scientifically illiterate. Chabris and Simons, however, are interested in why scientific evidence is so often rejected and consider why it is that anecdotes so much more powerful than data, and why we are sucked in to assuming there is causation when only correlation has been demonstrated. My one disappointment was that they did not say more about the reasons for wide individual variation in people's scepticism.
In sum, I enjoyed this book for the insights it gave into how people think and reason, and for its emphasis on the need to adopt scepticism as a mind-set. Its avoidance of jargon and clear explanations give it broad appeal, and it would make an ideal text for undergraduates entering the field of experimental psychology, because it illustrates how a good experimenter thinks about evidence and designs studies to test hypotheses.
The book starts out with the phenomenon referred to in the title, and which the authors are best-known for, i.e. the Invisible Gorilla experiment. This has become well-known but I won't describe it in case the reader has not experienced the phenomenon. Richard Wiseman has a nice video demonstrating it. This is perhaps the most striking example of how we can deceive ourselves and be over-confident in our judgement of what we see, remember or know. In all there are six chapters, each dealing with a different 'everyday illusion' to which we are susceptible.
My personal favourites were the last two chapters, which consider why people continue to believe in notions such as the damaging effect of MMR vaccination, or the beneficial effects of brain training for the elderly. Sceptics tend to dismiss those who persist such beliefs in the face of negative evidence, and denigrate them as stupid and scientifically illiterate. Chabris and Simons, however, are interested in why scientific evidence is so often rejected and consider why it is that anecdotes so much more powerful than data, and why we are sucked in to assuming there is causation when only correlation has been demonstrated. My one disappointment was that they did not say more about the reasons for wide individual variation in people's scepticism.
In sum, I enjoyed this book for the insights it gave into how people think and reason, and for its emphasis on the need to adopt scepticism as a mind-set. Its avoidance of jargon and clear explanations give it broad appeal, and it would make an ideal text for undergraduates entering the field of experimental psychology, because it illustrates how a good experimenter thinks about evidence and designs studies to test hypotheses.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A fascinating and accessible guide to how your mind cannot always be...
The Invisible Gorilla is a book that illustrates how frustratingly inept the human brain can be. The book examines various studies which show that the brain doesn't always work as... Read more
Published 1 month ago by TheLibrarian
What we all think we know, but don't
This is a very readable account, backed up by scholarly research, of all those things we think are common sense and 'intuitive', but which really lead us astray. Read more
Published 2 months ago by John Williams
All is not what it seems
Chabris and Simons are responsible for the famous gorilla video, subject of the 1999 'Gorillas in the Midst' article in Perception, which has been widely used in safety training... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Mr. Andrew Evans
Enjoyable read, lots of good information on intuition
It explains how hunches and intuition can deceive you. Useful for business and manufacturing. Well worth the money. Easy read. Has been quoted in other books. Read more
Published 5 months ago by R. Newton
Recommended
This book explains the scientific theory why people look at something in front of them yet fail to see the obvious! Read more
Published 6 months ago by Mobi
Great for psychology
If you're into psychology this is for you. If you're simply interested by the Gorilla movie and why you didn't see the Gorilla, then probably not as it's covered by a single... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Jeff Smith
A fascinating read
A very readable study of how our brains fool ourselves, and how politicians and advertisers fool us too. This book will make you consider statements with new understanding.
Published 8 months ago by Dr. M. W. Patterson
Lovely deceptions
Christoper Chabris and Daniel Simons wonderful book ''The invisible Gorilla'' is all about how our intuition deceives us. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Simon Laub
Gorillas in our midst
Looking is necessary for seeing but not sufficient. This sounds like the familiar idea that only connoisseurs can truly "see" the beauty of a work of art. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Sphex
Fantastic book - essential reading
An outstanding book. Well written and thought provoking. Elegant psychological experiments beautifully described and discussed. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Nemo
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