Christopher Chabris
PopTech 2010
Christopher Chabris is one of the creators of the world-famous “gorilla experiment,” a widely discussed and demonstrated experiment in psychology. The New York Times, The New Yorker, Dateline, The Early Show, Scientific American, NPR, and the BBC covered the experiment. It appears in textbooks and museum exhibits and was even discussed by characters on an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
In May 2010, Chabris published The Invisible Gorilla: and Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us with Daniel Simons. The book explains six “everyday illusions,” which are intuitive but mistaken beliefs that we all hold about how our minds work. It shows how these illusions work, how we can spot and avoid them in our lives, and how relying on our intuition is a perilous decision-making strategy in law, medicine, business, and politics.
Chabris is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Union College in Schenectady, New York. He is also an adjunct assistant professor of neurology at Albany Medical College, a research economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a visiting scholar at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. He received his PhD in psychology and his bachelor’s in computer science, both from Harvard University. He also holds the title of national master from the U.S. Chess Federation.