Question

Observers watch a group of people passing a basketball back and forth. A researcher asks the observers to count the number of passes made. As they count passes, many of the observers fail to notice a person in a gorilla costume walking through the basketball court. Which of the following is the most likely reason many of the observers do not notice the person in the gorilla costume?

1) They were focused on counting the passes
2) They were not paying attention
3) The person in the gorilla costume was too far away
4) The person in the gorilla costume was too small to notice

Answer 1

Observers failed to notice a person in a gorilla costume walking through a basketball court because they were focused on counting the passes being made by the players.

Step-by-step explanation:

In the study conducted by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, participants were asked to count the number of times a team dressed in white passed the ball in a video. During the video, a person dressed in a gorilla costume walked among the two teams, but nearly half of the participants failed to notice the gorilla. This is because the participants were so focused on counting the passes that they completely tuned out other visual information. This phenomenon is known as inattentional blindness, where people fail to notice something that is completely visible because they are actively attending to something else.

Answer 2

Observers likely missed the person in the gorilla costume due to inattentional blindness, as they were focused on counting basketball passes. Nearly half of the study participants failed to notice the gorilla because of the intense focus required for their task. Cultural backgrounds can also influence attention and perception.

Step-by-step explanation:

The most likely reason many of the observers do not notice the person in the gorilla costume is that they were focused on counting the passes. This phenomenon is known as inattentional blindness, which is the failure to notice something that is completely visible because the person was actively attending to something else. In the study by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, nearly half of the participants did not notice the gorilla because their attention was directed at counting the ball passes. Culture also influences what we pay attention to, such as in the study by Masuda and Nisbett, where cultural differences affected the recall of objects in visual stimuli.