I showed this video at a number of recent psychology conferences when I was talking about research methods, and thought I would share it on this site because it is quite entertaining.

Change blindness describes how people are quite poor at noticing change, something demonstrated in a number of studies (see also Daniel Simon and Daniel Levin’s classic ‘door study‘ or Richard Wiseman’s colour changing card trick or just look up change blindness).

Change blindness is different from inattentional blindness where people do not see things which are in plain sight – famously demonstrated in this video (and by Daniel Simons) this one from Richard Wiseman.

You may ask why I was using the video when talking about research methods – I suggested that students might think of ways to further test these phenomena. For example there is evidence that people are more likely to notice change if the other people are the same age as themselves.