The Invisible Gorilla

Øyvind Kvalnes
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Øyvind Kvalnes: BI Norwegian Business School

Chapter Chapter 4 in Communication Climate at Work, 2023, pp 29-36 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The invisible gorilla experiment demonstrates that people can be blind to aspects of a situation even when such aspects are placed well within their field of vision. Inattention blindness can be an obstacle to spotting important aspects of ongoing projects and workplace processes. People tend to see what is in front of them only if they deliberately direct their attention towards it, which means they can be blind to ethical and other questionable aspects of their work. A significant purpose of having a well-functioning communication climate is to make identifying and speaking up about invisible gorillas the norm. Newcomers in an organisation can be a phenomenal resource in spotting and drawing attention to blind spots. They see things differently because they have not yet been socialised into observing the environment in the same way as everyone else in the workplace.

Keywords: Invisible gorilla; Inattention blindness; Confirmation bias; Communication climate; System 1 and system 2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-28971-2_4

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-28971-2_4

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