Chapter 5: Agency and
Perception
“I’m not the referee. He didn’t blow, so I kept going,”
said Thierry Henry a member of the French national soccer team after France
eliminated Ireland, November 18, 2009, in the world cup qualifying match.
Thierry had “inadvertently” used his hand to bat the ball to a teammate who
then put it in for what turned out to be the winning goal. Referees can’t be
everywhere and obviously don’t see everything, and in soccer there are no
instant replays. The game doesn’t stop as it does in American football to
review the play in question. “Everybody saw the hand touch but the referees,”
said a disgruntled Irish fan, which is an over-statement because on Youtube,
it’s very difficult to see it even in slow motion. Probably not a single French
fan saw the hand touch. Sports allegiances can blind fans to plays that go
against their teams.
Everyone sees only from his/her own perspective and
through his/her own biases and experience. One night in a supermarket parking
lot, my son, his friend, and I all watched a man going from car to car trying
to open the driver-side door. We watched him lift the door handle of ten or eleven
cars. My son told me to run back into the store to tell someone while they
watched the man. Soon four security guards encircled the man. The man denied he
had touched any car doors and said he was putting his business cards under the
driver-side windshield wiper and produced some business cards as evidence. The
three of us, however, would have sworn in court he was attempting to gain
entrance to a vehicle, and we’ll never know for sure what was going on. Another
time in a mall parking lot a man tried to grab me but I screamed, ducked his
grasp, and almost hysterically ran back into the mall. There happened to be a
security guard at the door. I quickly told him what had happened, and he asked,
“What was he wearing? How tall was he? What race was he? Could you identify his
face? I sadly shook my head at each question. All I knew was I thought a man
tried to grab me.
The validity of what happens in a sports arena and in
crime situations brings up the question of how reliable eyewitness accounts
are. Scientific studies show that many factors can obscure perception and
attention such as surprise, fear, night, dim lighting, and a million other
variables. Face identification is especially difficult. If you are being a
victim of a crime, the fight or flight response is propelling you toward safety
not toward getting a closer look at the facial features of your assailant.
Facts show eyewitnesses can sway a jury, but eye-witnesses are often wrong. In
1997, forty cases were studied “where DNA exonerated wrongfully convicted
people. In 90% of the cases, mistaken eyewitness identification played a major
role. In one case, 5 separate witnesses identified the defendant”
(visualexpert.com/Resources/mistakenid.html). You wouldn’t think five people
could all be wrong, but they were. Perhaps three of us were wrong in assessing
whether the man in the parking lot was leaving his business cards or attempting
something illegal.
In one study, “a person enters a convenience store and
performs some memorable action (such as paying in pennies) to ensure drawing
the clerk's attention. Later the clerk views a photospread and identifies the
‘customer.’ The percentage of correct identification ranged from 34-48% and the
percentage of false identification is 34-38%. It is hard to know how far to
generalize such studies, but they suggest that eyewitnesses are almost as
likely to be wrong as to be correct when identifying strangers. Moreover, these
results occurred [in] highly favorable circumstances: extended duration, good
lighting, clear visibility, and no ‘weapons focus’”(www.visualexpert.com/Resources/mistakenid.html).
When you sit behind the wheel of a car, your perceptions
can be a matter of life and death. Sometimes there is too much information to
be processed in too short of time and the driver experiences what is called
attention overload. Thankfully you arrive at your destination without incident
because your ability to process the information presented to your brain didn’t
exceed your attention-overload levels. Accidents occur when there is too much
information for the brain to process quickly enough. “Most of the information
is visual input, the road itself, other vehicles, pedestrians, signs, the
passing scenery, etc. Moreover, the driver may be processing other information
sources such as auditory input (listening to the radio, talking on a cell
phone, carrying on a conversation with another passenger), or internal input
(remembering directions or planning what to make for dinner). If the visual
information flow is low, there may be enough mental resource to carry on all
tasks simultaneously. But attention demands may exceed supply when: the flow
becomes a torrent (driving fast), the information is low quality (poor
visibility), resources must be focused on a particular subset of information (a
car close ahead), [or] the driver's capacity is lowered by age, drugs, alcohol,
or fatigue. There may not be enough mental resource for all tasks. The driver
then ‘attends’ only a subset of the available information, which is used to
make decisions and to respond. All other information, goes unnoticed or slips
from memory…. This ‘inattentional blindness’ phenomenon is
doubtless the cause of many accidents” (www.visualexpert.com/Resources/roadaccidents.html).
I recently observed quite a serious accident at close
range. I was one car behind the two that crashed. The man who was not at fault
jumped out of his car, pounded his fists on his car, pounded his fists on the
other driver’s car, pulled at his hair, yelled at the other driver, and angrily
paced all around the accident. He continued to yell and pull at his hair and
pound his fists again on the cars. As he was pacing, pacing, pacing, he got
very close to me. His anger concerned me and consumed my mental attention to
such a degree that I did not even hear the arrival of the police. I had
inattentional blindness. I experienced fear and confusion. “Normal” had been
changed and it took time for me to refocus and react appropriately. In such
moments, when we are playing, so to speak, with half a deck, unnoticed and
unseen problems can become longcuts. Can we learn to counter the tendancy towards
inattentional blindness? Can we improve our ability to react well in tense
situations?
Daniel J. Simons, PhD, of Cornell University, studies
visual perception and attention. I watched a video of one of his experiments in
which a presenter asks an auditorium full of participants to watch Dr. Simons’s
one-minute video of a passing game. Two teams of three pass a basketball among
their own team members. One team wears black shirts, the other white. The
presenter instructs the participants to count how many times the white team
passes the ball. He says that men and women tend to see a different number of
passes and are encouraged to pay careful attention. At the end of the video,
the presenter asks how many times the ball was passed. (If you want to experience
doing the experiment yourself, stop reading and go to http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php.
Remember the instruction to
count how many times the white team passes the ball.) Did you count seventeen?
Many in the audience counted seventeen. Then the presenter asked how many saw
something unusual occur in the video. Some people raised their hands. I had
noticed laughter about halfway through the video but couldn’t see any reason
for it.
Then the presenter plays the video again. This time he
tells the group to forget about counting the number of passes and concentrate
on the whole, to see the big picture. The second time, everyone sees something
unusual. A person in a gorilla suit walks right through the two teams, makes a
gorilla-type pounding the chest action—front and center, facing the camera—and
walks off. The presenter then explains there is no difference in how the sexes
perform on the test, that he just upped the ante with that statement, actually
setting up the audience to miss the gorilla. I felt stupid and less than
observant. How could I miss a gorilla?
After viewing the video several more times, I realized I
suffer from "inattentional
blindness;" I don’t see the world accurately. There must
be a difference between my world and the real world because the real world has
gorillas walking around that I don’t see. I went to Dr. Simons’s website and
saw some of his other experiments, which again showed how easily our eyes can
deceive us. In the gorilla example, the deception began the moment the presenter
gave the instruction to count the number of passes. It didn’t cross my mind the
instructions were part of the experiment. My husband, on the other hand, whose
legal training has taught him to question most everything, saw the gorilla on
the first showing, but as soon as he saw the gorilla, he stopped counting the
number of passes. A double set of eyes helps see the whole picture, and as you
may be hoping, there is a secret to being more successful in seeing the
gorillas in your life, preventing inattentional blindness, and helping you
avoid longcuts. Having a spouse, sister, mother, friend, coworker, or even
stranger alert you to things you are missing, good and bad, is like having a
gorilla detector.
One time I flew into Oakland, California, to help my
daughter while her husband was out of town. I had to take BART (Bay Area Rapid
Transit) from the airport to Pleasanton where they lived. I’d never ridden
BART. My only experience with trains was on the underground in London, where I
became quite proficient at getting where I needed to go by transferring from
train to train. So I walked down into the BART station, scanned the walls for
signs telling me which train to take, and immediately heard the rumble of an
approaching train. I wasn’t prepared. Warning lights began to flash and I
looked around for someone to ask if the train went to Pleasanton, but there was
no one within earshot. The train screeched to a stop, the doors automatically
opened, and there I stood, paralyzed with indecision, looking up and down the
track for some indication of what I should do. The seconds passed. Just as the
train was about to pull away from the station, a man who must have been
watching me out of a window left his seat, ran to the open door nearest him,
and yelled, “There’s only one train. Get on the train!” Thankfully I jumped
aboard.
My problem when I don’t see the gorilla, whether,
negative or a positive, is that I may not believe you saw a gorilla either.
Imagine watching the one-minute video for the first time with someone you
trust, like your spouse or good friend. You don’t see the gorilla but the other
person does. The video is over and you say, “I counted seventeen passes; how
many did you count?” Your spouse or friend says, “You’re kidding right? It
doesn’t matter how many passes you counted. It’s all about the gorilla.” You
say, “What gorilla?” He says, “What gorilla! You didn’t see the gorilla?” And
an hour later you are still arguing about whether or not there was a gorilla.
In this scenario, you could just reply the video, but in real life there are
few opportunities for rewinds and replays. So how can you detect more gorillas?
You need to admit with openness you won’t see every gorilla, be willing to
believe others who are trustworthy when they tell you the gorilla is real, and
thank advisors and appreciate their courage for telling you what you missed.
I’m working on this myself. Wouldn’t it be great if I said to someone, who at
the risk of offending me, pointed out a gorilla, “Oh, did you see a gorilla?
Tell me where and when so I can watch for him the next time. Thanks for telling
me.” Accepting information from others who see what you are missing, like which
BART train went to Pleasanton, saves the longcut of standing of the platform
waiting for a train that won’t come. If Richard and I had stopped at a gas
station at Arcata, California and had asked drivers who had just come down the
mountain from Redding about their experiences driving California highway 299,
we would have avoided the inattentional blindness that caused us to miss the
beauty of the drive because we were so absorbed in staying physically safe.
We need to be open to the possibility that other people can
help us see the world as it really is. Protecting our personal agency depends
on it. Staying out of longcuts depends on it. Other people’s eyes can be as
effective as a slow-motion replay of a soccer match. When other people share
their experiences which are similar to what we are experiencing, we vicariously
have experience and gain additional wisdom for our own situation. An older
person who has successfully passed through a phase of life you are in right now
has information and insights that can be as valuable as a hidden video camera.
When you are emotionally consumed in inattentional overload, you miss the
obvious and use only a portion of the information available. To be able to view
a situation from where others stand is beneficial. The secret to seeing the
world as it really is is to set up a system of checks and balances with a
parent or spouse to whom you will listen and from whom you will take counsel.
When husband and wife are in the same boat rowing the same direction, they
counsel together and make a hundred times few mistakes than they would as
singles making unilateral decisions.
As we’ve seen, fear and preoccupation cause inattention.
So does flattery. One time my husband went to a seminar in London. A celebrity
to whom my husband had been introduced several years before was also at the
seminar. At one point, my husband found himself standing directly in front of
the celebrity. The celebrity put out his hand and said, “Richard, how nice to
see you again.” My husband, who was stunned someone of such prominence would
remember his name after only a brief introduction a few years before,
stammered, “I’m flattered you’d remember my name.” “Well, I ought to,” the
celebrity said, “You have on your name tag!”
Being aware of inattentional blindness helps identify
gorillas. After I felt paralyzed in the accident I witnessed, I knew I hadn’t
responded well. Hopefully next time, I’ll see the entire accident scene and not
allow the ranting driver to consume my attention so completely. By not hearing
the sirens, I failed to move out of the way of emergency vehicles in a timely
way and nearly caused another accident. Since everyone’s visual perception and
attention will fail probably daily, we can avoid longcuts by relying on
additional eyes and ears whether in sports, observing crimes, being a victim,
driving, taking trains, or missing the obvious fact that you have on a nametag.
There’s opportunity here on both sides of perception and attention to be
someone who helps others see gorillas and to be someone who accepts wise
counsel from trustworthy persons who are helping you spot the gorillas in your
life.
To
avoid longcuts:
1. Take wisdom and counsel from those who have walked
the road of life before you
2. Never believe you will be the exception to the laws
of nature
3. Know you will harvest what you sow
4. Learn the lessons of history so you won’t repeat
the same mistakes
5. Find
the power in resisting impulse, persisting, and delaying gratification
6. Develop
personal integrity and make moral decisions
7. Know
others see things you don’t and welcome their perspectives.
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