Attention and the Working Mind

In our version of the guorilla experiment, we instructed the participants to assign priority to the digit task. We know that they followed that instruction because the timing of the visual target had no effect on the main task. The sophisticated allocation of attention has been honed by a long evolutionary history. Orienting and responding quickly to the gravest threats or most promising opportunities improved the chance of survival. Even in modern humans, system one takes over in emergencies and assigns total priority to self protective actions.