Summary Of Change Blindness

Chapter 4 of Bazerman’s text is titled Bounded Awareness. “This chapter is about our systematic and predictable failures to notice critical information that is available to us. Just as we rely on the decision-making heuristics we discussed in Chapter 3, we also limit our search for information to simplify complex decisions” (Bazerman 60). Throughout these first few chapters we have discussed how our brain is essentially hard-wired to make quick and decisive decisions when faced with problems and situations. Sometimes these instincts suit us well and sometimes they do not. This chapter focuses on the way we use or ignore available information both when making decisions as a single person as well as making decisions in a group setting.

Change blindness discusses how people can completely misses quite obvious changes in the physical environment around them. An example is provided where someone misses a basketball being taken from a person they are having a conversation with. It seems the majority of the people in this study did not notice the change and further studies have shown that gradual changes in the environment go even further unnoticed than these drastic examples. Next discussed is Focalism and the Focusing Illusion. Focalism pertains to when we are too focused on the “main attraction”, so to speak and completely miss what is going on around us. “The common tendency to focus too much on a particular event (the ‘focal event’) and too little on other events that are likely to occur concurrently” (Bazerman 67). It is crucial to make sure we are taking in all information and elements of a situation in order to properly asses how things are being impacted and how we should proceed. “Schkade and Kahneman (1998) define the focusing illusion as the tendency of people to make judgements based on their attention to only a subset of available information, to overweight that information, and to underweight unattended information” (Bazerman 68). Basically, this means people are not scanning all available information, putting way too much emphasis on the limited information that have ascertained and therefore putting too little emphasis on the information

“One of the advantages of groups over individuals is that they collectively possess more information than any individual member does” (Bazerman 70). This is one of the main reasons working within teams can be such an advantage within the corporate world. Working in a group allows the decision-making process to access more information, more opinions and have a better opportunity to consider all research since each member thinks in their own way. This wealth of knowledge can be extremely beneficial in avoiding some of the issues we discussed regarding individual’s bounded awareness. However, aside, from being aware of our own limitations we must also be aware of the limitations of the members of a group. A group, or individual, needs avoid having too many options. “Essentially, we may have preferred choices and courses of action. Yet, when faced with too many options, we may not act on our preferences even when additional options are inferior to our preferred option” (Bazerman 80). One must learn to walk the fine line in this delicate balance of too much information and not researching enough information. It is critical to make the best decision, while also weighing the proper amount of information and