Why do we focus on items or information that are more prominent and ignore those that are not?

The 

Salience bias

, explained.
Bias

What is the Salience Bias?

The salience bias describes our tendency to focus on items or information that are more noteworthy while ignoring those that do not grab our attention.

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Where this bias occurs

Imagine you are someone who watches the news and sees several news stories of violence in your city. Although your likelihood of being a victim of violence has not changed, the memory of violence in your city remains salient in your mind and makes you feel more vulnerable when leaving your home.

Sources

  1. Armenia, G. (2013). Lazy Thinking: How Cognitive Easing Affects the Decision Making Process of Business Professionals. Honors College Theses. 126. https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/honorscollege_theses/126.
  2. Verena et al. (2018). Overcoming Salience Bias: How Real-Time Feedback Fosters Resource Conservation. Management Science, 64(3), 1458-1476.
  3. Ibid.
  4. Bollinger et al. (2010). Calorie posting in chain restaurants. National Bureau of Economic Research.
  5. Milkman, K. L., Rogers, T., & Bazerman, M. H. (2008). Harnessing Our Inner Angels and Demons: What We Have Learned About Want/Should Conflicts and How That Knowledge Can Help Us Reduce Short-Sighted Decision Making. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(4), 324–338. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00083.x
  6. Taylor, S. E., & Fiske, S. T. (1975). Point of view and perceptions of causality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(3), 439–445. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0077095
  7. Schenk, D. H. (2011). Exploiting the Salience Bias in Designing Taxes, 28 Yale J. https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjreg/vol28/iss2/2.
  8. Kehr, F. (2016). Feeling and thinking: On the role of intuitive processes in shaping decisions about privacy (Doctoral dissertation, Universität St. Gallen).
  9. Allcott, H. and Wozny, N. (2014). Gasoline Prices, Fuel Economy, and the Energy Paradox, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 96, issue 5, 779-795. https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:restat:v:96:y:2014:i:5:p:779-795.

About the Authors

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Dan Pilat

Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.

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Dr. Sekoul Krastev

Sekoul is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. A decision scientist with a PhD in Decision Neuroscience from McGill University, Sekoul's work has been featured in peer-reviewed journals and has been presented at conferences around the world. Sekoul previously advised management on innovation and engagement strategy at The Boston Consulting Group as well as on online media strategy at Google. He has a deep interest in the applications of behavioral science to new technology and has published on these topics in places such as the Huffington Post and Strategy & Business.

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