What It Takes To Survive

Psychologists call this "inattentional blindness"—we don't notice things when we don't pay real attention. One of the most famous studies of inattentional blindness was conducted by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris in the elevator lobby of the 15th floor of the Harvard psychology department. One team of players wearing white shirts and another group dressed in black tossed two orange basketballs back and forth. Subjects were asked to watch a video of this ball-passing exercise and count the number of passes made by players dressed in white. After 45 seconds in one version of the video, a woman in a full gorilla costume walks right through the scene. The hairy ape is clearly visible crossing the screen for five seconds. Remarkably, 56 percent didn't even notice the gorilla right in the middle of the action. In another video, the gorilla stops, faces the camera, pounds her chest and then marches off. The action lasts nine seconds, but again only 50 percent spotted the furry interloper.

How is it possible to miss the gorilla? And what does it tell us about survival? Professor Simons now teaches psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The main lesson and surprise of the gorilla experiment, he tells me, is how easy it is to miss something as obvious as a gorilla. "Distinctive and unusual objects do not automatically capture our attention," he says. Many other studies have demonstrated that it's difficult—if not impossible—to be aware of everything going on around you, or even right in front of you. One reason is that your eyes see in high resolution only within around two degrees of your focal point. In other words, no matter how good your eyesight, the vast majority of your surroundings are essentially out of focus. To understand, try holding your arm out in front of you and making the thumbs-up sign. The sliver of the world that you see in high resolution is only about as wide as your thumbnail. If you focus, say, on your cuticle, you'll immediately notice how the detail in your peripheral vision drops off dramatically.

The gorilla experiment is important, Simons says, because it shocks you into realizing how little of your environment you consciously perceive, especially if you're very focused on a specific task. Once you've gained this insight, Simons believes, you can start opening yourself up to all the possibilities that you may be missing. In everyday life, Simons recognizes there's no guarantee he'll notice a gorilla or cement truck coming right at him. This awareness has changed the way he interacts with the world. Especially when he's driving, he's more alert to potentially disastrous events, and he intentionally devotes attention to those dangers instead of assuming they'll immediately capture his eye.

When it comes to spotting hairy apes and red-light runners, Wiseman believes there's another important factor at work, too. Neuroticism is a personality trait of people who tend to be anxious, tense and sensitive to stress, he explains. In the gorilla experiment, people with high levels of neuroticism are very serious and intense about their assignment to count the number of basketball passes. People with low levels are calmer and less sensitive to stress. According to Wiseman, lucky people usually are more laid-back and open to life's possibilities—like giant headlines in his newspaper experiment—while unlucky people are more uptight, nervous and closed off.

If you want to test yourself, take a quick look at this domain name sometimes used by stress researchers: www.opportunityisnowhere.com.

What do you see? For many people, the web site seems discouraging: opportunity is nowhere. But others see the exact opposite: opportunity is now here. When it comes to hidden messages, lucky people perceive more of the world around them. "It is not that they expect to find certain opportunities, but rather that they notice them when they come across them," Wiseman writes in his book "The Luck Factor." This ability (or talent) "has a significant, and positive, effect on their lives."

Wiseman, who holds Britain's only professorship in the public understanding of psychology, at the University of Hertfordshire, has devoted a decade to exploring the secrets of serendipity. He discovered that some people actually do have all the luck, while others are a "magnet for ill fortune."