The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons Page A
Authors: Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons
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them with ease and fluency. Recounting or asking about a flashbulb memory can start a conversation that goes on for hours; try it the next time you’re at a boring dinner party. It is the richness of these particular recollected experiences that leads us to believe so strongly in their accuracy. Ironically, the conclusions drawn from the initial research on flashbulb memories were based entirely on the illusion ofmemory. The recollections of their subjects were so vivid and detailed that the researchers assumed they must be accurate.
After writing down his personal recollection of 9/11 for this book, Dan e-mailed his former students and asked them to send him their own for comparison. The first to respond was Stephen Mitroff, now a professor at Duke University:
I got an email from my girlfriend saying a plane hit the World Trade Center. I did a quick look at CNN and then went into your office where you and Michael Silverman were chatting. I told you. We went back to my office and we were looking at the images on Steve Franconeri’s computer. You surmised it must have been a small plane and the pilot lost control. We saw a picture of a huge commercial plane right next to the tower and you thought it must be a Photoshopped pic. We looked at various websites, including airline sites to look at the status updates of the flights that were being reported as hijacked. After more web searching, you hooked up the TV in our testing room and lots of people watched more in there. I
think
we witnessed one of the towers collapse, but I am not confident in that. We definitely were watching during one of the key events. We all started to feel an unwarranted uneasiness over being in the tallest building in town and left before lunch time. Michael and I walked back to Boston …
Dan’s other two graduate students at the time both reported being away from the lab that morning, so they could not have followed the news reports with Dan. Mitroff remembered Michael Silverman—Dan’s postdoctoral fellow at the time, now a professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine—being in Dan’s office but Dan did not. Dan e-mailed Silverman the same question he had asked the three Steves. The following report came back:
I was standing in your office discussing something with you. The radio on your bookshelf was on. Mitroff yelled from his officesomething to the extent that CNN was reporting that a plane just flew into the World Trade Center. I went to his office to see but the page was loading very slowly. I mentioned that little planes fly the Hudson corridor regularly, so I guessed it was possible. The page loaded and it showed a large plane flying toward the WTC. I said something to the extent that putting up a Photoshopped image like that was disgusting—I was still convinced that only a small plane had crashed. The next information we received came from your radio (CNN was slow and not loading anything additional). We heard that not one but two planes had hit. I then went to my office and tried to call my wife. She was also trying to call me. Neither of us could get through…. When I left my office, someone had turned on a television in the testing room. The picture was noisy. It showed that one tower had already dropped and we watched the second one fall. (I’m not sure if the second tower falling was live, but I suspect it wasn’t.) You made the decision for us to leave and go home around 11:00. Mitroff and I walked to his apartment and then I walked home.
There are interesting similarities and differences among these accounts. First the similarities: Everyone agrees that Dan heard about the attack from Steve Mitroff, they spent some time searching online for information, and then Dan turned on the television in the lab where he and Mitroff watched footage of a tower collapsing. Now for the differences: Dan did not recall Michael Silverman being present and he mistakenly remembered his other graduate students being there. All three
After writing down his personal recollection of 9/11 for this book, Dan e-mailed his former students and asked them to send him their own for comparison. The first to respond was Stephen Mitroff, now a professor at Duke University:
I got an email from my girlfriend saying a plane hit the World Trade Center. I did a quick look at CNN and then went into your office where you and Michael Silverman were chatting. I told you. We went back to my office and we were looking at the images on Steve Franconeri’s computer. You surmised it must have been a small plane and the pilot lost control. We saw a picture of a huge commercial plane right next to the tower and you thought it must be a Photoshopped pic. We looked at various websites, including airline sites to look at the status updates of the flights that were being reported as hijacked. After more web searching, you hooked up the TV in our testing room and lots of people watched more in there. I
think
we witnessed one of the towers collapse, but I am not confident in that. We definitely were watching during one of the key events. We all started to feel an unwarranted uneasiness over being in the tallest building in town and left before lunch time. Michael and I walked back to Boston …
Dan’s other two graduate students at the time both reported being away from the lab that morning, so they could not have followed the news reports with Dan. Mitroff remembered Michael Silverman—Dan’s postdoctoral fellow at the time, now a professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine—being in Dan’s office but Dan did not. Dan e-mailed Silverman the same question he had asked the three Steves. The following report came back:
I was standing in your office discussing something with you. The radio on your bookshelf was on. Mitroff yelled from his officesomething to the extent that CNN was reporting that a plane just flew into the World Trade Center. I went to his office to see but the page was loading very slowly. I mentioned that little planes fly the Hudson corridor regularly, so I guessed it was possible. The page loaded and it showed a large plane flying toward the WTC. I said something to the extent that putting up a Photoshopped image like that was disgusting—I was still convinced that only a small plane had crashed. The next information we received came from your radio (CNN was slow and not loading anything additional). We heard that not one but two planes had hit. I then went to my office and tried to call my wife. She was also trying to call me. Neither of us could get through…. When I left my office, someone had turned on a television in the testing room. The picture was noisy. It showed that one tower had already dropped and we watched the second one fall. (I’m not sure if the second tower falling was live, but I suspect it wasn’t.) You made the decision for us to leave and go home around 11:00. Mitroff and I walked to his apartment and then I walked home.
There are interesting similarities and differences among these accounts. First the similarities: Everyone agrees that Dan heard about the attack from Steve Mitroff, they spent some time searching online for information, and then Dan turned on the television in the lab where he and Mitroff watched footage of a tower collapsing. Now for the differences: Dan did not recall Michael Silverman being present and he mistakenly remembered his other graduate students being there. All three
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