I tried explaining this to my wife yesterday … unfortunately it didn’t get me out of trouble. I dedicate this blog post to her and my IB Psychology student (you know who you are) who asked me if the ‘door experiment’ was a fake.

Yesterday I returned home, greeted my wife with a peck on the cheek and began chatting, after a while I realised something was wrong and becoming increasingly more wrong. I’m very perceptive like that. It turns out that she had been out to the hair salon that day and I hadn’t noticed. Perhaps not so perceptive after all. Of course, once she had pointed it out to me, it was immediately obvious. And armed with my Psychology I had an immediate explanation … ‘Gorillas in Our Midst’, a classic experiment by Simons and Chabris (1999).

Most people with a passing interest in human behaviour would probably be aware of the experiment. Participants are informed that they will be shown a video of a group of people passing a basketball back and forth between themselves, and that the only thing they are required to do is count the exact number of passes that are made. They are also informed that it wasn’t going to be made easy for them. The individuals in the video would be moving around. There would be two groups passing basketballs, both of them moving around, and participants were to count only the number of passes made by the group wearing white t-shirts.

As with much experimentation in Psychology, there was a bit of ‘trickery’ involved. Simons and Chabris weren’t at all interested in the correct number of passes but in whether something that should be blindingly obvious could be made entirely ‘invisible’ with what illusionist term ‘misdirection’. What participants weren’t told was that in the course of the video someone in a gorilla costume would appear, walk between the basketballers, stop, beat its chest and then exit stage left. How many participants would notice the gorilla? Approximately 50 per cent (which is a figure that has been replicated). Half the participants gave the experimenters a completely blank look … “Gorilla? What gorilla?” and many would accuse the experimenters of using two different videos when they were asked to look again. You can’t miss the gorilla when you know the gorilla is going to appear.

We have embedded a version of the video shown to participants here. It is well worth showing even if your IB Psychology students are familiar with the study because, not giving too much away, other things are going on which highlight ‘inattentional blindness’. The TED talk by Simons is also very informative.

IB Psychology students can relate this experiment to the IB Psychology learning outcome: Evaluate two models or theories of one cognitive process (the cognitive process being memory). One of the more common models to examine is the multistore model of memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). As can be seen in the diagram below and according to this model memory consists of the three types of memory stores:

• Sensory stores
  
• Short-term stores (STS)
  
• Long-term stores (LTS)
  

The gorilla enters everyone’s’ visual field. The gorilla is picked up by the eyes and sent to the visual cortex for further processing (one of the modality-specific sensory stores). This all happens in milliseconds and is automatic and unconscious. We see the gorilla but we don’t see it at this stage. If we then attend to the gorilla sensory information, “Oh look, a gorilla!”(“tricky psychologists”) then the cognitive process of perception kicks in. To perceive something is to become conscious or aware of it. If we are misdirected (the gorilla) or preoccupied with something else (my wife’s hair style) we will be completely blind to what we ‘see’. Thus, perception and attention are one and the same.

However, as my wife pointed out, this does indeed beg the question, "Why isn't your attention focused on me?"

Show to your IB Psychology class before you do anything else!

The human brain is truly bizarre. The more I know about it, the less I understand it. OK, so I finally came to terms with the fact  that true and unfettered freewill is dead and buried some time ago. This was hard for me. My universe is not my play thing anymore. The decisions I make, the thoughts I entertain and even the people I'm attracted to are, at least to some extent, governed by processes outside of my awareness. And, if I'm not aware of these influences shaping my thoughts and behaviours, then I'm not truly free in making my own decisions.

Take for example, my lovely wife. I chose her, she chose me. A match made in heaven - perfect. End of story, right? Not quite.

In the IB Psychology Human Relationships option we study the learning outcome: Examine biological, psychological and social origins of attraction. [Actually, and off topic, if you don't study this option ask your Psychology teacher why - it's fascinating.]

It turns out that a lot of our attraction to another person is based on a particular set of immune system genes we both have, that we can both apparently sniff out (an olfactory sense). We are more attracted to those whom we share different major histocompatibility complex genes. Mix these genes together and we have children with stronger, healthier immune systems (conferring them survival and reproductive advantages vis-à-vis evolution). See Wedekind et al. (1995) for more details. 

We have no idea that this is happening. Our thoughts, decisions and behaviour are being influenced without our awareness, in a major way. Which I can accept, I see the evolutionary logic in it. But Williams and Burgh, the latest study to land on my desk just does my head in. Period. Holding a cold drink makes me perceive you as being a cold person?

Williams and Bargh (2008) staged job interviews with their participants. Each participant in their cleverly crafted experiment assumed the role of the interviewer and the interviewees were confederates. Before the interviews commenced another confederate engaged the participant in a lift (elevator) and had them hold either an iced coffee or a hot coffee - the experimental condition. Interviewers given the cold drink to hold judged the hapless interviewee as being less 'warm' and were much less likely to give them the job.

The mere fact of unconsciously priming an individual with physical feelings of cold or warmth, influenced perception and ultimately decision-making and behaviour. Our conscious choices may not be such an exercise in free will as we would all like to believe. Our cognitive thought processes are very easily manipulated.

You can  incorporate this information and this bizarre research study when you study or teach the IB Psychology CLOA learning outcome: With reference to relevant research studies, to what extent is one cognitive process reliable (for example, reconstructive memory, perception/visual illusions, decision‑making/heuristics)? The focus would be on decision‑making and the cognitive heuristics associated with much of our decision-making.

And finally, I know you're probably bursting with curiosity as to why feelings of hot and cold can have this very unusual influence on our thoughts. One of two reasons have been proposed. The first being that it is a simple side effect of having a fast, automatic response to familiar stimuli that lessens cognitive demands. Associations that can be formed automatically on the basis of prior knowledge or experience (i.e. priming) usually serve us well, and would have conferred survival benefits.

The other, less likely, explanation is that this is an innate response. We have been shaped by evolution to be more attracted to those who can keep us warm and less likely to freeze in our ice age caves. 

Whatever the reason, knowing that first impressions are all important, hand your job interviewer a cup of delicious hot coffee and shake hands using the nice warm hand that was just holding their coffee.  Just watch those job offers come rolling in.

The Williams & Bargh study will most definitely mess with your head! Watch the video below. Read the original 'Science' (oh! prestigious) publication above.

Author: Derek Burton - Passionate about IB Psychology