Expectation
When a person expects certain things to happen, he/she tends to block out other possibilities. This can lead to inattentional blindness. For example, person X is looking for their friend at a concert, and that person knows their friend (person Y) was wearing a yellow jacket. In order to find person Y, person X looks around for people wearing yellow. It is easier to pick a color out of the crowd than a person. However, if person Y took off the jacket, there is a chance person X could walk right past person Y and not notice because he/she was looking for the yellow jacket. Because of expectations, experts are more prone to inattentional blindness than beginners. An expert knows what to expect when certain situations arise. Therefore, that expert will know what to look for. This could cause that person to miss out on other important details that he/she may not have been looking for.
Read more about this topic: Cognitive Capture, Possible Causes
Famous quotes containing the word expectation:
“Often, when there is a conflict between parent and child, at its very hub is an expectation that the child should be acting differently. Sometimes these expectations run counter what is known about children’s growth. They stem from remembering oneself, but usually at a slightly older age.”
—Ellen Galinsky (20th century)
“Sweet pliability of man’s spirit, that can at once surrender itself to illusions, which cheat expectation and sorrow of their weary moments!—long—long since had ye number’d out my days, had I not trod so great a part of them upon this enchanted ground.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“That even an apocalypse can be made to seem part of the ordinary horizon of expectation constitutes an unparalleled violence that is being done to our sense of reality, to our humanity.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)