As I headed out to ski this morning I discovered that my gloves were missing. I searched high and low. They were definitely gone. Nobody had seen them. I could remember taking them off at a bar in the mountains the previous day and I convinced myself that I had left them there. That would have meant that I would have skied home without gloves but I became increasingly convinced that that was what I had done. Despite the implausibility of it all the conviction became stronger and stronger. I visited the bar again this morning and they had an impressive collection of abandoned gloves but mine were not amongst them. I was pretty ticked off that they had been so careless as to have lost them. When I returned to the hotel an hour or so later I searched everywhere again even though I was now absolutely convinced that I had not worn them the previous afternoon. About 20 minutes ago my gloves were handed to me – they had been found on a high shelf in the ski store room of the hotel. So I had worn them home, I had not left them at a bar in the mountains, I had worn them into the hotel on my return and put them down whilst putting my skis away. I don’t remember any of it.
All of this forgetfulness and general incompetence is not a surprise. Humans are very fallible beings. We do not make good witnesses to events because we are so easily distracted and very easily swayed by ideas that support any preconceived notion. In science this is called ‘confirmation bias’. Experiments have to be designed to be fair to remove this bias.
Watch the video below and try to count how many times the players in white shirts pass the ball to one another. It is not as easy as it seems.
How about putting your observation skills to the test with this video from Richard Wiseman?
As a species we are very vulnerable to suggestion and our senses are easily fooled. What do you make of the following video? It is (as far as I can establish) not a video editting trick but just a very clever use of perspective.
For more mysteries and thought provoking pictures and videos you might like this one or this one.
I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am to have my gloves back!
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