Something plainly within another person's responsibility becomes literally unnoticed, because the mind declines to process what it is not accountable for.
Adams's device renders an object invisible by making it appear to be someone else's concern, which he notes is far easier than actual invisibility. The stronger claim is the useful one: people do not weigh and decline an unowned problem, they fail to register it at all, which is why asking a room whether anyone noticed produces honest denials.
In practice
- A fault reported by nobody in an open-plan office was visible to eleven people who each placed it in another team.
- A gap between two departments' remits is not neglected; it is unseen by both.
- Standing
- The metaphor for what diffusion of responsibility describes as a finding. Adams's addition is the perceptual claim: the thing is not ignored but unseen.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- Proverbs that recur across cultures