For our blog project, we ask that you watch this short youtube video to test your awareness. It was used as a commercial for raising awareness for motorcyclists. We ask that you pay very close attention to the video the first time, because it really is amazing how many people are so unaware of something so obvious. So go ahead, take the Awareness Test.
***Please watch the video before reading the rest of this blog post!***
So what did you think!? Was it what you expected? Majority of the people that watch this are completely oblivious to what is really going on. How does this relate to class you ask? We simply want to raise your awareness. To look beyond the obvious, and focus on subtle details that you might not see the first time around. You can apply this towards your papers, or life in general. So, we have to ask, did you fall for it? Do you think the ad does a good job at making you realize you need to be more aware? Or does the advertisement actually have nothing to do with being aware? Do you think there are any other ways you could apply this to your papers or class in general? What did you think the video was trying to point out? Do you think the audience got the message?
A community that plays with words...for an analytic purpose. It's your move!
I have seen this video on my psych 100 class. When the first time I saw the word appeared on the video, I felt strange about what it was talking about. A bear? It's really funny when I reviewed the video again. Sometimes, I think I really concentrate on a problem, but that is also the reason that I lose something. The most terrible problem is that even though it is my mistake not to catch the detail, I would insist that the detail did not appear at all. It might be dangerous when a person witnesses a crime and points out a innocent person.
ReplyDeleteI got the right count but definitely missed the moon walking bear. The ad wanted to remind us that we should raise our awareness because sometimes we are easy to ignore some subtle details. And it mentioned “cyclists”, indicating that people should look out for cyclists when driving. I thought the ad passed a good and important message for the safety of cyclists. However, the way it made the point was a little “dishonest”. How can people keep attention into two things at the same time? I was so concentrated on passes counting because I was following the ad’s instruction. When given a specific goal or task, people should focus on what they do. If somebody really saw the bear, I would say he/she was distracted and quite possibly counted the wrong number. In addition, the bear dressed in black (just like a black team member) but we were asked to count the white’s passes. Suppose the bear is in bright color like red or yellow, what will happen? –we can definitely notice it. Thus I felt the ad intentionally guided us to ignore the bear by placing us in a special situation. In the real situation, when we are driving, we are not asked to count some numbers while some “cyclists” dressed in black bear suit appears…Anyway, the message and meaning of the ad is important and worthy to think about.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first time I’ve seen the video and I think it’s pretty amazing that you can be so oblivious to something happening right before you. I was so focused on counting the number of passes that I totally missed the moonwalking bear. I think that this video really shows that when you take a step back and look deeper into something there is a lot of meaning that you don’t always see the first time around. This is very similar to what this class has taught me. I’ve been able to see start seeing implicit messages in articles that I normally would miss.
ReplyDeleteI have never seen this video before and I completely missed the bear. When I re-watched and saw, I could not believe I missed something so obvious. I was so concentrated on the problem and on making sure I got the correct number of passes because I thought that was the awareness part of the test. I think this video does an excellent job of showing people how unknowingly oblivious they can be in such a simple way. The video was short and to the point. This is what made it so effective, because I can't imagine anyone getting bored with such a short interesting clip. It teaches us to look deeper into things that appear bland, because you never know what underlying meanings may be hidden. This is very similar to all of the analysis we have been taught to do in class, to look deeper into an article, video, story, etc. It is very likely that the first time through a source you will miss a detail, whether it is big or small.
ReplyDeleteI've seen this video! but i didn't know it was for raising the awareness for cyclistst it's so funny how you can see the bear the second time but you don't see it the first time. I was too busy counting how many passses the white team was making and didn't see anything notice anything else. This video really shows how when your driving you only look at the road and when you concentrate its hard to look at other things around you. Motorcyclists or even cyclists can come into your blind spot really easily and i think its hard to see them. I think that this video is really good and helps drivers to be aware all the time about the surrounding environment.
ReplyDeleteI've also seen this video before, and I had a similar reaction to most people. I think it's amazing how the human eye can completely miss something strange / out of the ordinary when you're focused on a task. However, I think that Chunan Shi makes a very valid point. It is kind of a trick in the video, as it tells you to focus on one thing. Also, as Chunan mentioned, the bear is not wearing any bright or distinctive colors, but is rather made to blend into the background - purposely tricking us. It is for this reason that cyclists' clothes are brightly colored and strangely patterned; to catch our eye. They stand out. So yes, while this video does make a valid point that we as drivers need to pay attention to our surroundings more; we are already doing so in other ways.
ReplyDeleteI have also seen this video a number of times, but I will admit the first time I saw it I was completely oblivious of the bear walking through the crowd of people passing along a basketball. It is quite funny how we can miss something so clear when we have the mindset of focusing on one thing and that one thing only. I think this ad can relate to how we revise our papers, because it supports the point that it's important to focus on other perspectives rather than just your own. People may just focus solely on their opinion while writing a paper but don't include other perspectives that they might be ignoring without even realizing it. Also, this ad relates to messages we as readers may miss when reading something for the first time and not really focusing in on it. Learning more about how to analyze has taught me that there often is much more behind something than many think. I think this ad demonstrates a great message!
ReplyDeleteI did not see the bear the first time and probably wouldn't have unless it was pointed out to me. The video asks us to count the number of passes the white team makes so that's where my focus was. After giving us a task they ask us if we notice something entirely irrelavent. I think many will take it as seeing things going on around us but you can also see this as staying on task and staying focused at what you are supposed to do. I think as long as you are staying on task with what you are set out to do (such as driving) you should be able to avoid accidents (such as motorcycles) but if you let your mind wander from the task like seeing the dancing bear when you should be focused on counting is like looking at something on the side of the road and not paying attention to other drivers. I think it can be seen either way but when I see it I think of distraction more than awareness.
ReplyDeleteWhile I wasn’t unaware of the man in the gorilla suit moon walking through the scene this time, I do remember completely ignoring the surprise guest the first time I viewed these tests years ago. This idea of awareness, in regards to your questions, is a mindset that many people need to focus and enhance upon. People tend to spend too much of their attention on a single task; though that makes that one task more efficient, you miss out on the whole picture. The “ad” did a nice job illustrating this point, just like the original experiment, however, I though as far as an ad for watching bicyclists it was “out there.” Would I believe that the ad convinced its audience? Depends, there’s a difference between seeing and understanding what had been experienced. People have to take what their observations and analyze why that happened. If individuals don’t learn from their experiences then the message, in the end, will fail to change anything other than, “oh, that’s a cool trick.”
ReplyDeleteI did the correct count while i definitely missed the moonwakling bear at the first time. I was totally focusing on the white team after i have been asked to count the passes, and automatically blocked the black things. When i saw the video again, i tried not to focus too much on the white team, then i found that the bear is kind of obvious. I think this video is pretty good that try to tell people we sometimes miss the obvious things, we just notice what we want to see. However, i think this video also did a good job that misdirect people to ignore the black bear. The bear was in black color which most people may try to block it when they count the passes, and i was actually just focusing on the basketball. In the real situation, a cyclist may not just focus on one point like a basketball, they normally would look around, and also would not focus on one color. Although this video is a trick but still reminds people that we should be more careful during some special driving situations.
ReplyDeleteThis is the kind of video that makes me laugh agter watching, not for the obvious moon walking bear and I missed it, but for the content that the video shows. It is really easy to miss something that we do not pay attention to, but that is the human nature. If we try to pay attention to everything, then probably we finally ending getting nothing. So it is fine to addict to one thing one time, but the video also reveals that we sometimes need to slow down and check around if we missed any "moonwalking bears" in our life.
ReplyDeleteI think the video is amazing, and I'm surprised that how could I miss the moonwalking bear since it's so obvious. I do count the number of passes right, because I kept my eyes on the four white players, and that can be the reason for my neglect of the black bear. I think people tend to be so confident to themselves sometimes. They believe in what they see, however, they always ignore what is happening around them. Also, people are zealous in the pursuit of our goals: fame, money, power, and all the beautiful things in the world. But, at the same time, do we igonor something/someone else that may also important to us? For example, our parents who look after us with extreme care. Maybe stop for a while, and look around, it can be different.
ReplyDeleteI think this video should really open people’s eyes. I know the main message was about driving but I think the message can apply to life as well. I think too many time people focus too much on one thing in life that they miss stuff going on around. If people took in more details and noticed little things happening around them, then I believe most people would be happier.
ReplyDeleteI was honestly counting the number of passes the group in white made and then when they said it was 13, the number I counted I was so happy, However when it said did you see the moon walking bear I was screaming no because I missed it and I started laughing, it freaked my roommate out, but it honestly shows that we will only concentrate on what we are told instead of looking at what is happening around us. Things happen in an instant and you have to be aware of your surroundings, so I like this commercial that it tells drivers to watch out for cyclists.
ReplyDeleteI think the ad first plays a trick on us because it asked the question "how many passes does the team white make." That obviously draws everyone's attention to count the passes. Therefore, no one notice the moonwalking black bear because they are focusing on the white. But if the ad doesn't ask the question first, will people still miss the moonwalking black bear at the first place? It is hard to say so.
ReplyDeleteWith that being said, many things in life that we are focusing on getting right now were told by other people in the first place . For example, money, fame and sucess. There is this whole list of things we want to accomplish in our life but few of them is coming from our own will.
ReplyDeleteThis was an extremely interesting and surprising video. Like many of my classmates, I got the number of passes correct but failed to notice the dancing bear. Although this is an interesting example of the importance of cautiousness, I don't completely agree that it directly pertains to road safety. Certainly people would be more aware when they're behind the wheel, being asked to assess and analyze the road compared to looking for a certain number of passes between the jumbled crowd.
ReplyDeleteI thought video was interesting, and in a sense opened up my eyes to what I may or may not be missing in my every day life. However, I feel the video effective for the most part at putting its point across to the audience while making the video short, intereseting, and precise. However I think they could have used a different example to express this, one more relatable to how we fail to see cyclists on the road.
ReplyDeleteThe video is very amazing. It said a lot by saying very little. I think , like most of the people , it is easy for us to get led by what the video at first place. It is a video that show us how the way people show us what they want to show us matter. After seeing this video i think of many other videos that i saw before. For examples , the movie Super Size Me. It is a movie about fast food industry. It showed us how the fast food companies made us ignore the bad impacts of eating fast food and continue buying fast food so that they made tons of profit. It is the same idea of this video, distraction. While leading the audiences or consumers to another direction , the companies try to hide the truth from the public and misled us to a situation they want us in. So it is very important to be objective and think independently cause that is the only way we can see how things really are.
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