19 August 2022

Attention - paid or stolen?

By the end of this post I will have revealed my deepest secret, something about which I feel deep shame. I've never told anyone before but it's time I revealed all.

Um… no I won't. 

I just wrote that sentence to get your attention and I'm admitting it.

Apparently, that's a thing now. On social media I see people sometimes writing, 'Oh I just said that to get your attention' or they might add a picture of a dog which they describe as 'unrelated image for attention'.

Strange thing: attention. Something of yours I can 'get'. And now you are 'giving' your attention to this post. 

But did you actually give me your attention? 

Or did I take it from you?  

Talking about attention


In English, the most common way we talk about attention is to say that we pay it. An interesting word - paying attention. It implies we are spending our valuable 'coin' of attention. Please pay attention to the sign. Pay attention to me! I am paying you attention.

But that's not the case in every language.

Apparently (according to the tweet from Javier), in French one 'makes' attention, in Spanish one 'lends' attention and in German one 'gifts' it. (I find words that accompany 'attention' depend a lot on the sentence structure, so in French you might write Veuillez faire (make) attention au signe, but Porte-moi (carry) de l'attention! and je t'accorde (grant) de l'attention.)

Regardless, the English concept of paying attention is quite different from the other three languages where we make, carry, gift/give, lend or grant attention.

Why do we say that we pay attention?

To pay attention involves an unusual meaning of the word pay, which usually¹ refers to exchanging money in return for things or services.

But sometimes it means to give something important and without a price: to pay a visit, to pay homage, to pay a compliment. These all seem positive things that we pay. In contrast, we don't say that we pay an insult, or pay an appointment. In this meaning of freely giving, what we give is positive and socially valuable.

So, I guess by using pay we are conveying that attention is a positive and valuable thing, something we deliberately choose to give - and we choose to pay it to people and things that are important to us. 

What is attention?

So what exactly is this valuable thing? The dictionary² says attention is:

♦️  the act or state of applying the mind to something 

♦️  selective narrowing or focusing of consciousness and receptivity

♦️  observation, notice, consideration.

Attention is a vital part of being a person. It is essential to do anything we want to do, to stay safe, to connect with others. 

And we enjoy the experience of deep and focused attention. The mental state of being fully absorbed in an activity is called 'the flow state' or being 'in the zone'. 

Paying attention feels good. When we do it. 

Interestingly, we don't pay attention to anything much of the time. Studies show that we spend up to half our waking hours in 'mind-wandering'. Our attention naturally fluctuates in and out of 'the zone' throughout the day. It seems we need time not paying attention!

How does attention work?

Those who study attention continue to debate how it works. One idea is that the brain enhances the critical piece of information, so it stands out perceptually. A competing idea is that the brain works to dampen all the other information.

Source
Neurologically, attention is complex activity essential for all higher mental functions. Large areas of the brain are involved. Two neural networks - one diffuse and distributed across the brain, and a second that is focalised in specific areas of the brain - switch back and forth constantly as we pay attention, zone out, encounter something novel, or do routine activities such as washing up that don't require our attention.   

While we can't recall or describe some sights, sounds and smells in our experience because we didn't pay attention to them, they are being perceived, nonetheless. This is sometimes called subliminal or unconscious perception, like hearing your order called out at the coffee shop while talking to a friend, or unconsciously taking in all the visual information needed to drive a car safely without being aware the trip from one place to another. 

Some people have disorders in attention as a result of dysfunction in these two brain networks or in coordination between the two. These disorders are very debilitating conditions including acute confusional states, left neglect (ignoring one side of the body), attention deficit disorder (getting stuck 'out of the zone'), and hyper-focus on specific perceptions, e.g. chronic pain. 

Even for those of us with intact neurological systems, attention is a strange thing. 

We can't and don't pay attention to everything

We don't pay attention to a lot of information around us. We ignore what we are not interested in. We also cease to be aware of heaps of information that are important in automatic operations, For example, we can pay attention to a podcast while we appear not to pay attention to the activity of driving (at least in our conscious awareness).

In fact, when we are paying deep attention to one task or person, our senses become more acutely aware of the signals they are focused on. In this state, we can miss other things that are so glaringly obvious, we find it staggering to be shown what we have missed. (This is an issue well-known to police for crime and incident reporting.)  

For two amusing demonstrations of our selective attention, check out the ball throwing experiment or the money tree experiment. 

Selecting where we pay attention allows us to function, we can't and don't pay attention to everything or we would be constantly overwhelmed. 

What we pay attention to is often socially influenced, as you would have seen in the Money tree experiment. We tend to pay attention to what we've been directed to, what others indicate is important to pay attention to.

So I guess that make sense: the things we select to pay attention are those consider socially or personally valuable, new and interesting. 

Are you paying attention?

When people write about contemporary social problems with attention, the focus is often on the dubious 'quality' of what many people are paying attention to. 

This can too easily become a 'highbrow vs lowbrow' debate. It turns on judgement about what people should spend their time and attention on, with criticism of people 'wasting' their time, constantly clicking on short videos and new content, and not being able to pay attention to study or work, even though it's important. 

I think the focus on what is getting our attention is a distraction. I think the focus on individuals and their ability to pay attention is also a distraction.

A much more important question is: who is stealing our attention?

Stealing something usually freely but selectively given? 

It's no surprise that the industries that excel in stealing attention are advertising, marketing, and the various social medica companies. If profit comes from sales, and sales comes from engagement, and engagement comes from selective attention, why not steal people's attention.

But businesses don't see it that way. They hide their efforts to steal your attention below their jargon of 'attention metrics', 'the attentional economy' and 'buying attention'. They point out there is no return on advertising dollars if people don't pay attention to the ad. They talk openly about how to make people pay attention to ads they would prefer not to see. Sure, they might say they are in the business of discovering what makes an ad effective, but what they mean is finding out what will get your attention whether you want to or not. 

Advertisers see no moral dilemma in stealing people’s attention. 

In fact, some justify their nefarious strategies for stealing attention by saying that if they don't do it, someone else will. If the competition is stiff and the scruples are floppy…!

Advertisers might talk about 'distinctiveness' and 'quality' of the 'creative', but what happens all too often is appealing to our baser instincts, exploiting human vulnerabilities and fear, resorting to outrage, delivering entertainment and amusement, relying on shallow and unchallenging concepts, and avoiding anything that will make people consumers stop paying attention.  

Anything that gets you to pay your finite and selected attention is allowable because then you will pay your finite and selected money! Your attention is big profit.

As I explored in Truth (part 7), we are so inured to the manipulations and dubious strategies of advertisers, marketing, and the big technology companies that we no longer notice their BS or rarely complain about their theft of our precious and finite mental capacity. 

Unfortunately, there's no law against attention theft. 

Attention theft is real

Many have written novels about the outcome of being constantly manipulated by people who want our attention and the possible (awful) futures, where stolen attention is all we experience. Where the regular buzz of excitement of something grabbing our attention, entertaining, amusing us, and never failing to direct us to something to consume becomes a requirement for a satisfying day. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest come to mind. 

Mark Mason (author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck) says, if getting attention is the only parameter of success (because it leads to profit which is the only real motivation), then things around us competing for our attention will become shallower and baser. He means across the board: TV shows, formulaic movies, advertising, educational programs and even politics. 

This buzz is so enjoyable, we can fail to recognise that we are not paying attention at all. 

Our attention is being stolen. 

What if some important things are just boring?

If we only pay attention to things that make us feel good and entertain us, things that demand and steal out attention, who's paying attention to all the boring but important thinks like democracy, good government, accountability, fairness, justice, and all the other things we say we value. 

What if getting stealing our attention is the only thing that a politician needs to do to get steal our vote. 

What if the media cycle (not just social media) becomes a churn of competing for attention through all and any method (i.e. empty headlines that shock and outrage) and that we lose our sense of what it means to be well informed. 

What if thinking about complex and challenging ideas and problems is just too onerous, too unrewarding, too damn boring.

The theft of our attention leads to much more concerning outcomes than the theft of our money on unnecessary and useless 'stuff'? It can deprive us of a coherent, contextual and nuanced understanding of the world. 

Stop the theft! 

We might think that we are choosing where we pay attention, but we need to consider that someone worked deliberatively to steal it through devious means?

We are surround by experts in stealing other people's attention. Sometimes we might realise we can't concentrate anymore, our ability to focus is deteriorating, and wonder if it is a personal failing. But it's not an individual problem; it didn't just happen; it is a deliberate theft.³

The answer is more than stepping away from the attention-stealing screens and amusements by taking a three month ‘break’. In involves calling out attention stealing for what it is: the systemic and immoral theft of our most important cognitive asset. 

Advertisers and PR folk know enough about attention to help any client to steal it from people. With no concerns about human dignity and honesty, it's a case of just about anything for hits, clicks, shares, views, votes, and ultimately for profit and personal gain. 

But equally, the rest of us also know enough about attention to protect it better from being stolen. We can be more alert to the active process of choosing who and what we pay our attention to. 

Source

You may well want to watch an ad for hair replacement and then the next episode of that kinda crappy series. Or you may be being manipulated. It's not up to me to say. 

But before you look at your screen, you can ask yourself a simple question: am I paying attention or is someone stealing it from me?

Footnotes

  1. Combined with other words the meaning can change: pay back meaning revenge or pay out meaning loosen or let a line slacken.
  2. It also has a few other everyday meanings I won't explore here.
  3. As so often happens, just after I completed the final draft of this post, the universe sent me a review of Stolen Focus, a book by Johann Hari which presents the same argument that our attention and focus are being deliberately stolen. He argues the business model of companies like Google and apps like Facebook is based on working out and manipulating the weaknesses in our attention, in order to keep us scrolling. Read the review and more about the book here.

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