September Newsletter: Psychological Typing, Change Blindness and Web Presence

We hear over and over from Jesters that they cannot understand why a particular issue or blind spot they clearly perceive is not reacted to by others in their organizations. This blindness is not as surprising as one might think.

Scientists have gathered some remarkable evidence which shows that it is possible to observe something without actually perceiving it in any meaningful way.

The astonishing lack of attention we pay to our environment has been highlighted by research conducted by Dr. Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois.

In one experiment, people who were walking across a college campus were asked by a stranger for directions. During the resulting chat, two people carrying a wooden door passed between the stranger and the subjects.

Half of those tested failed to notice that, as the door passed by, the stranger they had been talking to had been substituted with another man who was of different height, of different build, who sounded different and was wearing different clothes.

Despite the fact that the subjects had talked to the stranger for 10-15 seconds before the swap, half of them did not detect that, after the passing of the door, they were speaking to a different person. This phenomenon, called change blindness, highlights how we perceive much less than we think we do.

To see a fascinating video clip from the experiment click here.

Other researchers have reported complementary studies that underline our limited capacity to hold visual scenes in short-term memory, revealing how our "visual scratch pad" is controlled by a penny-sized region of the brain called the posterior parietal cortex, near the back of the head.

In some studies, subjects showed the ability to remember everything in visual scenes containing four or fewer objects but frequently made mistakes describing displays containing a larger number of objects, indicating that the storage capacity of our visual scratch pad is about four.

In the case of the door experiment, for example, it seems that the limited visual short term memory capacity of the subjects meant that they did not retain enough details to notice that they were talking to a new person.

So far as our brains are concerned, these studies suggest that the old adage "out of sight, out of mind" may be true - and a challenge for individuals striving to be effective in an organization.

Without Jesters around to point out critical features of an organizational environment, individuals trying to understand that organization (particularly those using concepts like "management by walking around") may consistently miss seeing the full picture.