Too busy to perceive?
by Mike on Nov.03, 2009, under Findings
How perceptive do you think you are? If you were walking down the street would you notice a couple having a domestic? Would you spot someone slipping on something on the pavement? Would you notice if your favourite shop that you walk passed every day changed their layout?
Some of us are more perceptive than others, but there are still some things that we all miss – or at least almost all of us.
In Washington DC inside a busy metro station on a cold January morning in 2007 there stood a man with a violin. He stood there and played 6 pieces of music by Bach for around 45 minutes. In those 45 minutes around 2,000 people passed through that metro station, on their way to work or to a meeting. After 2 or 3 minutes a middle-aged man noticed there was a musician playing, slowed his pace a little and stopped very briefly, he then continued on hurriedly.
4 minutes pass and the violinist gets his first tip, a woman throws him $1 on her way passed.
6 minutes later and a young man leans against the wall close to him and listens for a moment, he checks his watch and then moves on.
10 minutes go by. A very young child – maybe 3 years old – stops but his mother hurries him along. The child then stops again and stares at the violinist, the mother pushes him again and the child carries on walking, turning his head constantly as they’re walking, ignoring all other distractions around him. Several other children do exactly this over the next 30 minutes or so – all of their parents, without exception, hurry their children along.
45 minutes have passed. The musician hasn’t stopped playing but only 6 people stopped and listened for a very short while. Around 20 gave a tip but didn’t stop. The violinist collected $32 in total.
1 hour has now passed. The violinist stops playing. No-one stops, no-one notices and no-one cares. Everyone continues as they were.
The violinist in the metro that day was Joshua Bell, arguably the greatest musician in the world alive today. He played one of the most difficult and intricate pieces of music ever written using a violin worth over $3.5 million. A few days prior to this Joshua Bell played in a theatre in Boston to a sell out crowd, the cheapest seats in the house were $100.
No-one took any real notice of Joshua that day. A few people threw him some cash, but they probably would have done whoever he was and whatever he was playing. Children seem to be far more aware of their surroundings, their minds more open to what’s going on around them – probably not clouded by hurried thoughts of the day to come and the events it will hold.
This whole thing was an experiment done by the Washington Post to test people’s perception of the world around them and how we respond to ambient music.
Something to think about…