In several experiments, researchers showed that while participants were focused on a simple counting exercise, they did not notice a person dressed as a gorilla, a woman with an umbrella, or a loud electronic noise.
This phenomenon, known as unconscious blindness, tells us that even though we may think we are fully perceiving the world around us, our brains are actually only processing a tiny fraction of the sensory information we have at any given moment.
In a similar way, hidden work faces the same phenomenon. It's not that we don't see the work of our mothers, partners, colleagues or friends; we just don't register it because their contributions are permanent, intertwined in everyday life and often hidden "before our eyes". According to Harvard researcher Jeremy Wolfe and his colleagues, this phenomenon is called "normal blindness".
It's how our mind filters out the daily changes in our environment, allowing us to focus on more immediate concerns. Therefore, we can walk through a neighborhood every day and not notice the leaves that have changed or a new building being built.
Given how dramatic unconscious blindness can be, it has far-reaching consequences for the social dynamics and interactions we experience, whether in everyday life, at work or at home.
The hidden effort of everyday life
Think about the many tasks a parent has during the day: preparing meals, organizing schedules, cleaning, helping with lessons, and much more. Most of these happen in the background and over time, we forget about them until someone isn't there and things start missing.
Unconscious blindness can have serious consequences in the workplace. Researchers remind us that when employees are focused on a specific task, they often miss important details around them.
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