Ch. 1 - The Divided Self

geo · Tue Apr 22, 2014 9:10 pm


	Dexter wrote: He describes some amazing research on split brain experiments, I've heard some of it before.

I just got to Robert Wright's video where he talks about split brain experiments. It's called "Modern Psychology and the Self" in Lecture Three.

Interesting what he says about the right brain being more interested in literal truth, and the left brain being more interested with the bigger picture. This is close to the end of the lecture.

For some reason, this reminds me of this famous selective memory test. Have you guys seen this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

DWill · Wed Apr 23, 2014 4:11 pm

I saw the gorilla, but I also had already heard about this experiment, and so I was waiting for the gorilla and also distracted from the task, badly missing the correct answer. If I'd been concentrating, maybe I would've not seen the gorilla even while knowing the catch. This experiment seems to relate in some way to the reliability of witnesses to events. It's remarkable what people report seeing or not seeing, depending partly on their state of attention at the time.

LevV · Wed Apr 23, 2014 6:30 pm

I had a different experience with this. After viewing the second clip with the gorilla I had this vague sense that I had seen something other than the people and the ball, but I would not have been able to say what exactly the thing was.
After that experience my first thought also was how this could play out with a witness to a criminal investigation where the witness knows he/she saw something and may be influenced by a bias or a comment from an investigating officer.

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