The Invisible Gorilla

And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us

By: Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons

Narrated by: Dan Woren

Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself - and that's a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, creators of one of psychology's most famous experiments, use remarkable stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to demonstrate an important truth: Our minds don't work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but we're actually missing a whole lot.

Chabris and Simons combine the work of other researchers with their own findings on attention, perception, memory, and reasoning to reveal how faulty intuitions often get us into trouble. In the process, they explain:

• Why a company would spend billions to launch a product that its own analysts know will fail
• How a police officer could run right past a brutal assault without seeing it
• Why award-winning movies are full of editing mistakes
• What criminals have in common with chess masters
• Why measles and other childhood diseases are making a comeback
• Why money managers could learn a lot from weather forecasters

Again and again, we think we experience and understand the world as it is, but our thoughts are beset by everyday illusions. We write traffic laws and build criminal cases on the assumption that people will notice when something unusual happens right in front of them. We’re sure we know where we were on 9/11, falsely believing that vivid memories are seared into our minds with perfect fidelity. And as a society, we spend billions on devices to train our brains because we’re continually tempted by the lure of quick fixes and effortless self-improvement.

The Invisible Gorilla reveals the myriad ways that our intuitions can deceive us, but its much more than a catalog of human failings. Chabris and Simons explain why we succumb to these everyday illusions and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against their effects. Ultimately, the book provides a kind of x-ray vision into our own minds, making it possible to pierce the veil of illusions that clouds our thoughts and to think clearly for perhaps the first time.

©2010 Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons (P)2010 Random House

Critic reviews

"From courtrooms to bedrooms to boardrooms, this fascinating book shows how psychological illusions bedevil every aspect of our public and private lives. An owner's manual for the human mind!" (Daniel Gilbert, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and New York Times best-selling author of Stumbling Upon Happiness)

loved it, will listen to it repeatedly!

will take time to listen to it again as to take more from it each time.

It’s right there in front of you…

Any additional comments?

Captivating topic, perfect examples & study dives, and excellent delivery – The Invisible Gorilla had my attention on page one and maintained it while Chabris & Simpons challenged my perception on how our minds capture & recall memories.

Right at the onset of an event, it’s remarkable how some artifacts one would assume to be obvious may be completely oblivious & never recorded. How we fill in the blanks (such as assuming a bookshelf was full of books), or don’t capture elements that you wouldn’t expect to be there (such as a giant red gorilla beating it’s chest on a basketball court). The Invisible Gorilla highlights how our minds deceive us, and leaves me with the takeaway to recognize that, as must as we want to believe that our memories are sound, we all have illusions. Recommended.

This book will change how you look at everything

This is one of those books that stays with you. It leads the reader to re-examine their opinions by bringing many of our subconscious biases into the light. The tone is personable and entertaining while still informative. Well worth the read.

Eye Opening!

Everyone should read this book! I will be giving it as a gift to some of my family members (who really need it).

Outstanding survey of your cognitive foibles

If you could sum up The Invisible Gorilla in three words, what would they be?

Fascinating, enlightening, scientific

What other book might you compare The Invisible Gorilla to and why?

"Thinking Fast and Slow" by Kahneman, or
"Slights of Mind" by Macknik et al, or
"The Seven Sins of Memory" by Schacter, or
"How We Know What Isn't So" by Gilovich, or
"Kulge" by Marcus, or
"On Being Certain" by Burton

All those books outline the irrational behaviour of humans, and how be arrive at beliefs that are not necessarily true.

Any additional comments?

I really like the format of the book. It is well organized into sections that address different cognitive illusions.

Great book on human intuition.

Great book on the fallacies or illusions that we have everyday. You'll be able to spot some of these.

Tame your Lying Monkey Mind

This was such a great book. From missing the most obvious things, how our brains make false memories, talking mad crap about the whole Mozart music for babies to discrediting the brain training programs; this book does a great job to shake out the BS that our minds have become programmed with over time. I would highly recommend this for everyone. There is even discussion on the research of Dunning and Kruger. We live in a society where most people suffer from the Dunning Kruger effect and believe conspiracy theories because they think they are experts at everything. When the high priestess Pythia aka the Oracle of Delphi remarked to a friend of Socrates that he was the wisest man in all of Athens, Socrates tried to prove her wrong. He went around asking “intelligent” people in positions of authority questions. In the end Socrates concluded “I believe we are equally ignorant but I may be considered wise simply because I alone seem to be aware of my own ignorance”. It didn’t end well for Socrates but I believe to become wise, we must understand our own ignorance. Only after we recognize the problems can we work on the solutions 🙏

Informative and Good for L. E. Memory

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, This book helps understand the human capacity for memory and its relevance to court room testimony. Even when you consider it from the perspective of interviewing witnesses, victims, suspects, or police officer having this understanding of memory will help with decisions that are based upon accounts from potential witnesses.

What does Dan Woren bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The information is very informative and it would be difficult to listen to but Dan does a good job of providing the information where he is easier to listen to than most if they had to deliver the same material.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Brain Games would be very similar to this book.

One of the only class-required books I’ve ever finished 🤯

This book is so good it will change how you look at things in your daily life and even how you see yourself. Also, what a performance! So clear, so easy to listen to and understand. 100% recommend to anyone!

What Gorillas Are We Missing?

This is the famous invisible gorilla experiment, familiar to anyone who has been reading the growing body of cognitive psychology and behavioral economics books about the (predictable) limits of our brains.

The sad fact is that none of us are as smart, rationale, analytical, or emotionally balanced as we perceive ourselves to be (unless we are clinically depressed, the only people who can accurately judge their own looks, performance, or status). We better face up to the fact that we miss more than we ever recognize (the gorilla experiment), and we forget more than we remember (and when we remember we tend to re-write those memories to make us the stars of the action).

We over-value what we have (loss aversion), and are slow to give up existing beliefs (even in the face of overwhelming evidence). We fail to listen to arguments that don't conform to what we already believe (confirmation bias), and give too much weight to arguments that match our existing beliefs. We confuse confidence with knowledge, good looks with expertise, and wrongly assume that skills in one domain (say athletics) transfer to other settings.

We over-think when we should listen to our guts, and listen to our guts when we should take some time and think things through. We see causality when only correlation exists. We see narrative when the only explanation is random chance. We give ourselves too much credit for success, and too much blame for failure. We assume we are exceptional, when in reality almost all of us are merely average.

Does know this change our behavior? If us academic types recognize just how likely we are to get it wrong, to miss the gorilla, will it change how we approach our jobs? Will we be better teachers, administrators, librarians, and technologists knowing how clueless we
really are?

I have a growing library of books to teach me all the things that I'm not very good at. I like this library - these books sort of take the pressure off. If you liked the following books I'm sure you will greatly enjoy The Invisible Gorilla (which, by the way, is well above average in the quality of its writing).

Here is my "why we are so dumb" list of books - can you suggest any additions?:

Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, by Dan Ariely
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, by Kathryn Schulz
Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life, by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang
Brain Rules, by John Medina
Why We Make Mistakes, by Joseph T. Hallinan
How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, by Gerd Gigerenzer
Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow
Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, by Gary Marcus
Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert
The Ape in the Corner Office, by Richard Conniff