Our inability to perceive the world around us is a fascinating area of psychology. For managers this is dangerous. Below are a couple of examples which may help us to see just how much we miss.
The first area is change blindness or inattention blindness.
This phenomena results in us missing changes that are happening around us. Have a look at this blog posting.
The entry goes onto explain the "door passing through the middle but no-one noticed" experiment. A full video of the door change experiment can be found here.
If you didn't read the entry, the significance of the experiment may be lost. An experimenter stops and asks a stranger for directions. During the explanation some workmen pass through the middle of the conversation and the experimenter changes. Would you notice that you were now talking to someone else? In the experiment, and subsequent ones of similar design, about half the people notice the change. That's right, only half the people asked for directions noticed that they were talking to a different person after the door passed through the middle.
Don't believe it would happen to you and you would notice the change? Try this one. Another posting from the same blog as above.
You may have also heard of the basketball counting experiment. In the following video, watch very carefully and count the number of times the people in black shirts pass the basketball to each other. Just the people in black shirts, not the white shirts. The video is here.
Did you happen to see anything else? If not watch the video again.
These are only a few examples of just how much information we can miss. Once we fully start to appreciate this, we know we have to listen just so much more carefully.
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