Out of Focus: With Guests Dolly Chugh, Max Bazerman & Mark Pendergrast

Choiceology with Katy Milkman

Charles Schwab

Behavioral Economics, Society & Culture, Social Sciences, Decision Making, Charles Schwab, Business, Science, Investing, Dan Heath, Katy Milkman

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2019

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you’ve ever watched a TV crime drama, you’ve probably heard that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. A person commits a crime literally right in front of someone, but the witness can’t identify key characteristics of the perpetrator—or worse, gets the details wrong and implicates an innocent person. Why does this happen? In this episode of Choiceology with Katy Milkman, we look at the limitations of attention and perception. The episode begins with the description of a surprising experiment involving two teams passing basketballs. You can try the experiment here, even if you’ve already listened to the episode. Katy follows with the story of one of the most famous marketing blunders of all time: the introduction of New Coke by the Coca Cola Company. Mark Pendergrast, author of For God, Country & Coca Cola, recounts the history of the brand and takes you inside the company to explain how their executives came to a disastrous decision. Robert Teszka then demonstrates how magicians harness the limitations of an audience’s attention in order to surprise and entertain. Next, we hear from Dolly Chugh of New York University’s Stern School of Business and Max Bazerman of the Harvard Business School. They explain how this tendency to miss important information is systematic and predictable, and how it can negatively affect decisions in business and life. Dolly Chugh is the author of The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias. Max Bazerman is the author of The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See. Finally, Katy offers simple strategies to help you expand your awareness and make better-informed decisions.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Maybe you've seen this video online. There are two teams. Three people are on each team and one team is wearing
0:17.2	black shirts and the others wearing white. Each team has a basketball and you're asked to count how many times the team in white passes the ball.
0:29.0	You focus on the team in white as they weave around the team in black bouncing the ball and
0:35.2	passing it and you count each pass. It takes some concentration but it's not too
0:41.5	difficult.
0:49.8	There, 16 passes, but here's where it gets weird.
0:57.0	The narrator then asks if you spotted a gorilla on the court while you're counting. Wait, what?
1:00.0	If you've never seen this before, it's astounding.
1:04.1	About half the people who watch the video and have never heard about the gorilla miss it completely.
1:11.8	But when you review the scene a second time, there he is, right in front of your eyes.
1:18.0	Someone in a full body gorilla suit struts into the middle of the action, pounds his chest, and walks off.
1:25.2	You can't miss it when you're looking for it.
1:28.0	But if you're like a lot of people, it's as if the gorilla was invisible while you are
1:32.0	counting the passes. It's as if the gorilla was invisible while you are counting the passes. It's amazing.
1:35.2	If you haven't seen it, don't worry. I haven't spoiled the video completely. There's more to it than just a gorilla.
1:45.0	The video comes from University of Illinois Psychology Professor Daniel Simons
1:50.0	and has been viewed nearly 10 million times on YouTube.
1:54.0	You can find the link in the show notes and at Schwab.com slash podcast.
1:58.0	It demonstrates a cognitive phenomenon that can lead people to miss obvious and sometimes important
2:04.6	information in their environments. And it's not just a vision thing. It affects all kinds
2:11.0	of judgments we make and the consequences can be large enough to alter
2:15.1	entire industries. I'm Katie Milkman and this is Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab.
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