Monthly Book Review (November) - Did You Spot the Gorilla by Richard Wiseman

Every month - that is the plan, anyway - I will review a book selected randomly from my Paranormal Library. This month, I will review Did You Spot the Gorilla by Richard Wiseman.

Did You Spot the Gorilla is a book based on the psychological concept of selective attention - otherwise known as 'inattentional bias'. In their 1999 study, Simons and Chabris discovered this phenomenon: they asked participants to count the number of passes made by the basketball players in their video, and when asked at the end, 'Did you spot the gorilla?' the majority of people hadn't - they had been so focused on counting the number of passes, that they didn't notice the man in gorilla costume appear, not one of the players leave the stage, nor the curtains changing colour.
    Wiseman's book proved to be interesting - it includes some activities for the reader to participate in without leaving the comfort of their cosy chair, which help them to understand the ideas and concepts the author talks about. The book is filled with quotes, as well as with interesting studies, such as Wiseman's own study in which he asked participants - the 'lucky' individuals and the 'unlucky' individuals - to count how many pictures there were in a newspaper. Unbeknownst to them, he had put a big bold box that read, 'Win £100 by telling the experimenter you have seen this.' The results found that the individuals who had actually noticed (and therefore took subsequent action for) the 'Win £100' box, were the individuals who had claimed that they  frequently had spells of good luck. This suggested that lucky people were better at spotting unexpected opportunities than unlucky people - a finding that follows Derren Brown's discovery. This study clearly found the same concept as Simon and Chabris - that if you are sufficiently attentive to all the sensory information available to you (or most of it), you will be more easily able to notice the unexpected - whether it be an opportunity to win £100 or spotting a man in a gorilla costume.
Wiseman also includes key tips for "spotting the gorillas in your own life" - which try to help the reader to take advantage more of unexpected opportunities that crop up.
    The book also has an unusual element - two characters, Oliver and Lucy, feature in a couple of pages in each chapter, and they enhance the reader's understanding of how looking for gorillas (unexpected opportunities) can be applied to real life.
    Was the book worth the time and effort to read? Undoubtedly, yes. It had the author's usual sense of humour and perhaps "fun", and once again proved to be an interesting, enjoyable and informative read.

Look out for next month's book review!

References

Did You Spot the Gorilla - Wiseman, R. (2004). London: Arrow Books.
Inattentional bias - http://www.kienco.com.au/blog/2013/05/11/environment-scanning (last accessed: 29/11/15)
The Monkey Buisness Illusion - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY (last accessed: 29/11/15)