Well, it seems I do.

Without really planning it, it seems like monkeys factor an awful lot in my little lifestoogood world.

From Apes to the Monkey Mind to my chosen twitter handle, now I’d like to bring you – guess what? More monkeys. Just check this out:

It’s another fascinating video which I think you’ll like (the reason it’s here is that it’s also more scientific research-based content which demonstrates very nicely these concepts of filters and confirmation bias that I have been writing a lot about in recent articles).

You may have heard of this experiment and if you have, that will influence your viewing of the video. Unlike the McGurk effect, this one only really works 1st time:

 
It’s difficult to write about this particular experiment without giving too much away – and perhaps I already did by banging on about monkeys.

This is actually a remake of the original video in which Daniel Simmons himself has added the title ‘The Monkey Business Illusion’ so I’m not sure what effect that has on proceedings. In the original video (here) there is no mention of monkeys and I have to wonder if therefore it works better.

As I’d already started on my monkey track I just added the one with the title to which Simmons also adds a couple of other changes (curtain changing colour, person leaving).

Even if you weren’t caught out, you can appreciate that many were (I was the first time I watched it and like many, had to rewind the video to check I’d really missed the gorilla) and that this is a great example of how we filter out information that is right in front of us.

Why Do We Miss Things Like This (Filtering)

Humans are actually extremely efficient and powerful machines.

We are great at creating shortcuts and at automating very complex tasks (which we do by making neurological connections and constantly reinforcng them – often referred to as muscle memory in athletes but remember it’s our brains that control our muscles so it all amounts to the same thing).

We are also great at selecting what’s relevant to us and throwing away everything else. This is where filtering comes in. Of course it can go wrong, but in general it is a concept that has stood us in good stead for thousands of years and is to do with survival and efficiency. This is why we all have our very own unique view of the world.

We are bombarded with literally millions and millions of pieces of information every day through our five senses. We filter all of this information because we simply don’t have the capacity to take it all in and process all of that information. So we apply filters and we have selective attention. The filters we apply are based in everyday life on multiple factors mainly to do with our personal biases, experience and expectations, the latter of which can be primed to focus attention in a particular area – as in the Monkey Business Experiment which prompts us with the challenge to count the passes of the basketball (which reduces our focus elsewhere and can cause us to miss other things, such as a big gorilla walking right in front of us and beating his chest).

Another angle on this that I’ve also written about is that not only is our own view of the world filtered and unique, but it also means that stories we are told (other people’s view of the world) are also by dfinition filtered and therefore incomplete: Filters: Every Story Is Incomplete… & What To Do About It

Quick Personal Example About Seeing What Is Relevant To Us

It works in reverse too – i.e. instead of missing things, suddenly seeing things we hadn’t spotted before.

A few years ago I was looking into a particular type of car on the internet – learning all about it, because I was interested in learning more about Hybrid technology that that car used. The car in question was a Toyota Prius. Over the next few days I suddenly started seeing Toyota Prius’ everywhere. It’s not as if there were suddenly more on the road, it’s just that this particular make and model of car had become more visible to me so I started spotting them. have you ever experienced anything like this?

What Does This Have To Do With Confirmation Bias

Confirmation Bias is a huge part of the filtering we perform without really knowing it. Confirmation bias is our natural tendency to want to confirm what we believe. In every day life we will tend to put more emphasis on things that confirm our beliefs and experiences and minimise or miss completely anything that contradicts our beliefs and experiences.

Say for example you hold a belief that all dogs are violent. You will hear loud and clear stories in the news of anyone being attacked by dogs, or indeed anything that confirms this view and you will be likely to play down anything that contradicts this view or at least caveat such stories by saying ‘yes but they can still turn violent’/’it’s an exception’/’they can all be violent’ or something similar.

Journalists, media, marketers and commentators understand these filters and biases – in some cases they depend upon them to sell more – so we unfortunately live in a very bias-driven world.

Final Thought – Added Complication

The added complication in all of this is that a huge part of confirmation bias is that most of us really like to believe we are right – even when shown quite clearly that we weren’t. We are in general very emotionally invested in our own thoughts, beliefs, memories and success.

Therefore an added dimension which further exaggerates the skew at play here is that we cling desperately to our beliefs and world views and can be absolutely astounded, simply don’t believe it or suspect foul play when proven wrong.

Best to instead keep an open mind.

So we are amazing, powerful, efficient but also completely capable of getting totally mis-calibrated sometimes – like totally – and that goes for all of us.

Remember: the wise man knows that he knows nothing.