"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." — Anais Nin
The Invisible Gorilla
Would you spot a gorilla if it walked right across the screen? If you think the answer is an obvious “yes,” think again.
In 1999, psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons conducted a now-famous experiment to illustrate the phenomenon of inattentional blindness.13 Participants were asked to watch a video in which two teams, one dressed in white and the other in black, passed basketballs back and forth. The task was simple: count the number of passes made by the team in white. Focused on this task, many viewers failed to notice something unusual—a person in a gorilla suit walking into the frame, beating their chest, and then walking off-screen. When asked afterward, most participants were shocked to learn that they had missed such an obvious detail.
The invisible gorilla serves as a powerful metaphor for ethical inattentional blindness in decision-making.