Essay On The Invisible Gorilla
The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast concepts discussed within two book reviews by Shannon Woodman and Emely Aguiño. Ms. Woodman reviewed the book Being Wrong, Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz and focused on the concept of “emotional reactions to error” (Woodman); while Ms. Aguiño completed her book review of The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons and highlighted two concepts, including the “illusion of attention” and the “illusion of memory” (Aguiño). Each of the books reviewed examine how attention, memory, reasoning, and emotion might align to impact our decisions, yet each provide different perspectives. Woodman’s review tackled the idea of how emotions are tightly connected
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Aguiño discusses in her book review, the “illusion of attention” and the “illusion of memory” directly pertain to the emotional reactions of our inadequate or simply wrong decisions. When we fail to pay attention to our surroundings we are bound to miss important information in constructing a more informed decision. Chabris and Simons indicate, “we experience far less of our visual world than we think we do” (as cited in Chabris, et al, 2010, p.7). Although, the experiment Aguiño describes in her review centers on the visual aspects of attention, a gorilla unexpectedly appearing during an activity and quickly disappearing (Aguiño, 2016); she quickly connects our mindless and automatic behaviors generally to the day to day decisions that are affected by this “illusion of attention”. Addressing the connected concept of the “illusion of memory”, Ms. Aguiño explains that “although one might feel very confident in a memory, many things could distort the memory and therefore not be a good base for decision making” (personal communication, Aguiño, September, 2016). The confidence we transfer to our decisions is a direct result of what we know, what we have achieved, and what is happening in a current situation. All of these derive from the concepts discussed in the two
Aguiño discusses in her book review, the “illusion of attention” and the “illusion of memory” directly pertain to the emotional reactions of our inadequate or simply wrong decisions. When we fail to pay attention to our surroundings we are bound to miss important information in constructing a more informed decision. Chabris and Simons indicate, “we experience far less of our visual world than we think we do” (as cited in Chabris, et al, 2010, p.7). Although, the experiment Aguiño describes in her review centers on the visual aspects of attention, a gorilla unexpectedly appearing during an activity and quickly disappearing (Aguiño, 2016); she quickly connects our mindless and automatic behaviors generally to the day to day decisions that are affected by this “illusion of attention”. Addressing the connected concept of the “illusion of memory”, Ms. Aguiño explains that “although one might feel very confident in a memory, many things could distort the memory and therefore not be a good base for decision making” (personal communication, Aguiño, September, 2016). The confidence we transfer to our decisions is a direct result of what we know, what we have achieved, and what is happening in a current situation. All of these derive from the concepts discussed in the two