Not Seeing What’s There

When we do not see something, that’s really present, that might be because the scene is cluttered or unfamiliar. We tend to pay the most attention to things that are most familiar and most sensational. We notice the drably familiar (because it has become ingrained in our memories) or the glittery unfamiliar (because it stands out from the rest of the scene).

We might also miss the obvious because we are distracted or we bring beliefs and expectations that prevent us from seeing what is actually in plain sight.

That was the premise of Edgar Alan Poe’s story “The Purloined Letter.” In this story, the detective must figure out the location of a letter stolen from the royal apartments. Searchers have looked in every conceivable hiding place, with no luck. When the inspector offers 50,000 francs for the letter, Dupin the investigator retrieves the letter from a box in clear sight.

We often look right past something that is right in front of us because our attention is focused elsewhere. For reasons good and bad, we dismiss a number of possibilities. Often we overthink a problem and miss the most obvious answers.

Our attention can only be trained on a limited number of subjects in a scene. If we look for one thing, we will not notice another, as was demonstrated in a famous experiment about two groups of basketball players.

Usually half of the people who see this video notice the person dressed as a gorilla. Even when people see this video and experience their “aha” moment, they do not necessarily learn how to see more carefully.

We can only make projections based on our knowledge and experience of the world. If we have experienced similar situation before, we are likely to make predictions based on that experience.

Looking Forward