So you think you would notice if a gorilla walked into the room…..well, if you were sober, you would probably see him. If you had had only one drink, chances are you would miss him.
Seema Clifasefi and her colleagues [1] asked 47 college students to watch a video clip that showed two teams of three people passing a ball to each other. The students were instructed to count the number of passes. About halfway into the video, a woman dressed in a gorilla suit (something you probably don’t see every day) walked into the middle of the players, beat her chest, and then walked away. The gorilla part of the clip lasted about a third of the video.
Before viewing the clip, half of the students had been given one serving of vodka, and the other half had consumed tonic water. To control for placebo effects, half the vodka drinkers were told they were drinking tonic water, and half the tonic water drinkers were told they were drinking vodka. One drink should have put the drinkers at about half the legal limit for driving.
Only 18 percent of the drinkers noticed the gorilla, whereas 46 percent of the non-drinkers did. One has to ask what happened to the sober people who missed the gorilla….Well, previous research by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris [2], who developed the gorilla tape used in this study, showed that about 50 percent of people will miss key stimuli when their attention is focused elsewhere.
Inattentional blindness is a well-understood phenomenon in cognitive psychology. When we are focused on a task (counting passes of the ball in this case), we can miss a lot of other information. I recall a rather weird interview with my middle school principal after I was “mooned” by some high school students in a passing car. The principal wanted a description of the car, and I was trying to find a good way to say that I hadn’t noticed much about the car….
At any rate, Clifasefi and her colleagues have demonstrated that even one drink, which won’t put anyone over the legally drunk limit, could have significant effects on attention. They conclude, “If you’ve had one drink, you may be so focused on paying attention to your speed so as not to get pulled over, that you completely miss seeing the pedestrian that walks directly in front of your car.”
[1] Clifasefi, S.L., Takarangi, M.K.T. & Bergman, J.S. (2006). Blind drunk: The effects of alcohol on inattentional blindness. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20, 697-704.
[2] Simons, D.J., & Chabris, C.F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28, 1059-1074.
1 Comment
cableguy · December 9, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Ok, I gotta say, there was one dubious part to this article. I think even an inexperienced drinker could tell the difference between water and a shot of vodka. So, I question the effectiveness of the control: telling the half the vodka drinkers they were in fact drinking tonic water. Other than that, this is a hilarious study.
Comments are closed.