A recent LA Talk Radio Show featured Daniel Simons discussing common illusions and misperceptions with Allen Cardoza and Dr. Melody Foxx.

Simons, a Professor of Psychology at Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, is the co-author of The Invisible Gorilla with Chris Chabris. The new book focuses on the illusions of attention, memory, confidence, knowledge, causality, and consequences. The thesis of the book is that we do not see or remember things as clearly as we think we do.

Using dozens of real-world stories and pop-culture examples backed by clever experiments, the authors illustrate how we continually get things wrong, and how we have to recognize that we only have a limited amount of mental resources available to use at any particular time.

Our minds don’t always work the way we think they do. Although, we often think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, we’re actually missing a whole lot. It’s a good thing to be less sure of yourself sometimes, noted Simons. In The Invisible Gorilla, the authors use a wide assortment of stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to illustrate our common misperceptions.

Besides revealing how our faulty intuitions often get us into trouble, the authors blend the work of other researchers with their own findings on attention, perception, memory, and reasoning.

Our thoughts are beset by everyday illusions, explained Simons. Again and again,we fail to experience and understand the world before us. Ironically, we write traffic laws and build criminal cases on the erroneous assumption that people will notice when something unusual happens right in front of them.

Numerous examples illustrate why people succumb to everyday illusions while convinced that they perceive the world rather accurately. But The Invisible Gorilla is more than a catalog of human failings because it reveals the numerous ways that we are deceived by what we think and believe.

Want to find out more about The Invisible Gorilla, then visit Allen Cardoza’s site.