A NOBEL PRIZE WINNING GORILLA HAS SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT TO TEACH US ABOUT BUYING A HOME

The psychological experiment was called “gorillas in our midst” (1999 : Danial Simons & Christophe Chabris) revealed two fundamental flaws of the human mind, namely, humans are blind to the obvious and we are also blind to our blindness.

The experiment centered around having people watch a short video of some basketball players passing around a ball. People were asked to watch the video and count the number of times the players passed the ball to one another. Before reading further go out and google this experiment and take it yourself or have a loved one take it (it really is funny when you do it).

While people were do this seemingly obvious and simple task – watching and counting the number of ball passes – a person dressed in a full gorilla costume would walk through the players, stop and look at the camera, beat his chest and then walk out of view. After the people watched the video psychologist would ask “how many times did they pass the ball?” Most everybody was able to get a fairly accurate count of ball passes. The psychologist would then ask, “did you notice anything else?” and 70% of the folks would answer “no”. When the video was replayed, and participants simply watched - without having to count - they would gasp in amazement that they had never seen the gorilla walk right through the basketball players!

The experiment was done to demonstrate a condition called “selective attention” and it has huge consequences in the field of behavioral economics. When people have their minds focused on one thing, they often don’t see other, seemingly obvious things, as well.

What does this all mean for home buyers? When you are caught up in all the things involved in buying a house it’s very easy to completely overlook some glaring flaws in the house you’re getting ready to lay down big money for.

As a professional home inspector, I’m not focused on anything else except looking for any “gorillas” that you need to know about before they ruin your home buying experience! Call us and schedule an inspection… mention “Gorilla” when you schedule your inspection, and we’ll knock $30.00 off

your inspection fee (knowledge really does pay!).