Invisible Gorillas in the Mind: Internal Inattentional Blindness and the Prospect of Introspection Training.

Much of high-level cognition—choices, beliefs, judgments, intuitions—appears inaccessible to consciousness, but this may be due to internal inattentional blindness: missing an otherwise consciously accessible internal event because attention is elsewhere. Rather than being structurally unconscious, many higher mental processes might be preconscious, becoming conscious if attended to. The article synthesizes indirect evidence for this claim, argues it is a foundational untested assumption in therapy and mindfulness practices, and suggests it could form the basis for a science of introspection training.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Much of high-level cognition appears inaccessible to consciousness. Countless studies have revealed mental processes-like those underlying our choices, beliefs, judgments, intuitions, etc.-which people do not notice or report, and these findings have had a widespread influence on the theory and application of psychological science. However, the interpretation of these findings is uncertain. Making an analogy to perceptual consciousness research, I argue that much of the unconsciousness of high-level cognition is plausibly due to internal inattentional blindness: missing an otherwise consciously-accessible internal event because your attention was elsewhere. In other words, rather than being structurally unconscious, many higher mental processes might instead be "preconscious", and would become conscious if a person attended to them. I synthesize existing indirect evidence for this claim, argue that it is a foundational and largely untested assumption in many applied interventions (such as therapy and mindfulness practices), and suggest that, with careful experimentation, it could form the basis for a long-sought-after science of introspection training.