“Where is it?” I asked my wife, while my eyes scanned the kitchen cupboard again. I was looking for the sugar jar. The plan was to impress her with my exceptional tea making skills which I acquired after watching few YouTube videos.
“It should be there. Right in front!” informed my wife from the other room.
“It’s not here. I can’t see it.” I again scanned all the shelves in the cupboard.
“Look again. I kept it there in the morning.” My wife sounded very sure about it.
“No! It’s not here. I am sure.” I confirmed while closing the cupboard. What happened next shouldn’t be surprising for you because most of you have experienced it before.
She came, opened the cupboard, grabbed the sugar jar which was obviously sitting right in front and handed over to me. I stood there flabbergasted. How could I miss it? What’s wrong with my eyes? Have I gone blind? It felt as if the jar manifested itself out of thin air. It was like…magic.
Haven’t you experienced something similar in your life? I see a smile on your face. 🙂
Now that embarrassing episode in the kitchen may look like a minor incident but it holds an important clue to a fascinating behavioural bias inherent in every human brain. It’s called Inattentional Blindness, which means not being able to see things that are actually there.
[Read more…] about Latticework of Mental Models: Inattentional Bias