How could 42 “normally law-abiding” Connecticut high school girls think it was okay to steal so many items that their pile of goods was 50 feet long when confiscated by police? “I just thought it was a custom” explained one of the many students, all members of their school’s marching band, who were flabbergasted to learn that the items they stole as part of a ritual scavenger hunt made them guilty of a criminal offense.

Source: News of the Weird, p. 15, Funny Times, April, 2003. www.funnytimes.com

Your Vote, Most likely this happened because…

1. The girls didn’t care about other people’s property rights.
2. The girls are idiots.
3. The idea of the ritual was so familiar.

The Blind Spot Guru says:

Not #1 or #2! These girls were neither stupid nor delinquent. But they did have a blind spot. They failed to see that their actions were wrong. How did that happen?

Just as we fail to notice the smell of smoke in a room if it has been seeping in slowly, we “get used to” whatever becomes a familiar part of our lives and accept it as normal. It doesn’t occur to us to question it — to stop and think about it at all.

In fact, as young children we assume that what we experience is what everyone else experiences — that what happens in our family is typical of what happens in all families. Only when we begin to be more aware of others and to see that their families are different from our own do we realize “not all Moms always take their kid’s side in a disagreement” or “not all Dads believe that you shouldn’t trust other people.”

And what happens then? There’s a chance that we might begin to question what our family is like, especially if we’re in late middle school or in high school and feeling rebellious. But there’s also a chance that we’ll decide it’s the other families who are wrong. The idea that Moms should always take their children’s side or that we should be suspicious of others until they earn our trust is so familiar to us that we automatically think it’s the “right” way to think or to act.

And that, of course, creates a blind spot. We become blind to the possibility that being a good parent may sometimes mean challenging our children’s decisions, or that being distrusting may limit our relationships in ways that cost us dearly.

Not noticing the familiar is one of the ten blind spots discussed in Blind Spots. Learn how you can counteract the power of sheer familiarity in order to not only avoid blunders but to discover more creative solutions to problems.