There’s a famous selective attention experiment created by University of Illinois psychology professor Dr. Daniel Simons. It has nothing to do with boxing—yet its implications may have everything to do with judging.
Take a look before you read any further.
Your task: Count how many passes are made by the students wearing white shirts.
The correct answer is 15.
But...
Did you see the gorilla?
Roughly 50% of people don’t.
If you did see the gorilla, you probably find it hard to believe anyone could miss it. If you didn’t, you're likely baffled at how something so obvious slipped by.
Dr. Simons’s research shows there's no meaningful difference between "noticers" and "non-noticers" in terms of intelligence, focus, or concentration. The difference lies in what they’re attending to. When your brain is locked onto one task—like counting passes—it may not register unexpected information.
It’s not that you weren’t paying attention. It’s that you were paying attention too specifically.
Read This:
Paris in the
the spring
Did you catch both “the”s?
Most people don’t. Our brains don’t expect a duplicate, so they skip right over it. We take shortcuts, filling in what we expect to be there.
Now try this:
“Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.”
Despite the scrambled words, your brain easily decodes it. Why? Because it recognizes patterns and fills in gaps based on experience.
You might be thinking: “Neat stuff, Tom. Glad you went to college. But what does this have to do with judging pro boxing?”
Let’s break it down.
Selective Attention in the Ring
What a judge chooses to focus on has a huge impact on what they perceive—and what they miss. A judge might zero in on the jab battle, body work, or power punches.
Dr. Simons explains.
"If you knew nothing about the boxers and had only the perceptual information about what they did, then theoretically, you could be entirely objective."
But we don’t judge in a vacuum. There’s pre-fight knowledge, crowd noise, TV commentary, and bright lights—all of which influence attention and perception.
“Even without that context, two people can see the same thing differently. But differences in what you know and expect—like what a fighter is known for—also influence what you notice," Simons adds. “You could see the body puncher’s body shots more clearly because you expect to see them. Your top-down beliefs will change how you focus your attention.”
Officials often judge the same fighters multiple times. Familiarity creates patterns. And when focus narrows too much—like in the gorilla video—critical elements can be missed.
We’ve all seen rounds where clean jabs, sharp body shots, or effective ring generalship seem to go unrecognized. It may simply be because the judge wasn’t attending to those actions.
Expectation and the Bias of Familiarity
That extra “the” you missed? That’s your brain relying on expectation to process information. In boxing, this can be dangerous.
When an underdog is outboxing a heavy favorite, a judge may unconsciously “fill in” the action based on what they expect to see. That expectation can override what’s actually happening.
“Going back to the gorilla,” Simons says, “You don’t see it because you’re intently focused on something else. If a single fighter has your attention, you could miss what the other one is doing.”
Before Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in the 10th round, only one judge had Douglas ahead—despite his dominance. Tyson’s reputation as invincible may have influenced perception.
Now imagine if Hector Camacho had suddenly adopted a peek-a-boo stance and stalked his opponent like George Foreman. Would judges see what was actually happening—or try to make it fit their existing expectations of Camacho’s style?
Recognizing Patterns—And Getting Trapped by Them
We decoded the scrambled Cambridge sentence because our brains recognize patterns. The same happens in judging.
As noted, judges often score fights involving the same fighters multiple times. Over time, they begin to expect certain patterns: Fighter A is aggressive, Fighter B fades late, Fighter C lands the big shots.
“When a fighter is known for something,” Simons says, “judges can wind up looking for that pattern and expecting to see it. While their attention is focused there, other action can be missed and not scored.”
Judges follow the sport. They watch videos. They read press. But all that pre-fight context can cloud in-the-moment perception if not kept in check.
The Solution: Awareness and Self-Reflection
Cognitive science teaches us that human perception is not photographic. Memory is flawed. Attention is selective. We interpret what we see through the lens of experience.
That’s not a weakness—it’s human nature.
But as judges, we have to be aware of how perception can color what we see. We need to be present. To watch broadly. And to catch ourselves when our experience starts shaping what we think we saw.
“I wish I had an easy answer to make judging completely objective,” Simons says. “The fact is, anything involving human perception and judgment will always have some subjectivity.”