How Observant are You?

This month's blog entry is all about awareness...... and a psychological principle called 'inattention blindness'.

This kind of blindness happens when your brain is so busy paying attention to one thing that it overlooks very big 'other' things. Want to see if it can happen to you?

Our friends at Transport for London have come up with some fun ads in which to test it...

TEST #1 : Count the number of passes....

TEST #2: What you notice....

TEST #3: By now you might be getting better....

* Why does it matter?

We think these tests are a fun reminder that there's always more to a story than we might realize. When we see something 'with our own eyes' it is always filtered through a lens of what we were or were not paying attention to, what does and doesn't interest us, and how focused or distracted we might be at the moment. Here it's funny to notice that we don't just overlook things when we are distracted -- in fact, we might just overlook things equally well when we are very focused.

* Today's assignment:

When someone has a different opinion than you, use this as an opportunity to take the role of an experimenter. Try to figure out what kind of 'lens' the person is looking through, which features are standing out to him or her, and if its possible that either of you may have overlooked things apparently obvious to the other.

To learn more about attention blindness, or to try a few more tests, follow these links:

• Explanation: Wikipedia
• New course at ImpressionScience: Reboot, 5-sense training for full-life living
• Chinese + Americans see things differently: Article

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To find out how the newest findings relate to you, take our personality test at: http://www.personality100.com/

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