Effects Of Salience Research Articles

The effect of mortality salience on intertemporal choice: the role of flavor perception

The effect of mortality salience on intertemporal choice: the role of flavor perception

Salience effects on attentional selection are enabled by task relevance.

Attention is a limited resource that must be carefully controlled to prevent distraction. Much research has demonstrated that distraction can be prevented by proactively suppressing salient stimuli to prevent them from capturing attention. It has been suggested, however, that prior studies showing evidence of suppression may have used stimuli that were not truly salient. This claim has been difficult to test because there are currently no agreed-upon methods to demonstrate that an object is salient. The current study aims to help resolve this by introducing a new technique to test the role of salience in attentional capture. Low- and high-salience singletons were generated via a manipulation of color contrast. An initial experiment then verified the manipulation of salience using a search task where the color singleton was the target and could only be found via its bottom-up popout. High-salience singletons were found much more easily than low-salience singletons, suggesting that salience powerfully influenced attention when task relevant. A following experiment then used the same stimulus displays but adapted the task so that the singletons were task-irrelevant distractors. Both low- and high-salience singletons were suppressed, suggesting neither was able to capture attention. These results challenge purely stimulus-driven accounts by showing that improving salience only enhances attentional allocation in situations where the object is also task relevant. The results are instead consistent with the signal suppression hypothesis, which predicts that task-irrelevant singletons can be suppressed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Survey instructions bias perceptions of environmental health risks

A basic function of government is to manage environmental risks. This requires measurement of how the public perceive different risks, but it is hard to measure risk perceptions in a neutral, unbiased way. In a pre-registered experiment with a nationally representative sample (N = 800), we tested the effects of survey instructions on perceived risk from common environmental health hazards. Participants were randomised to read instructions that made salient a relatively unfamiliar hazard (electromagnetic fields; EMFs), a familiar hazard (carbon monoxide) or no hazard (i.e. that the study was about environmental health risks in general) before rating the perceived risks of a series of hazards. Results revealed an asymmetric salience effect. Instructions that highlighted EMFs elicited higher perceived risk from EMFs, while perceptions of other hazards were unaffected. Instructions that made carbon monoxide salient did not affect perceptions of carbon monoxide, but diminished perceived risk from other hazards. Effects were observed using standard rating scales and via a novel policy budget allocation task. In exploratory analyses, we further tested the relationship between perceived risk as elicited by rating scales and revealed risk perceptions. How often respondents report thinking about a hazard day-to-day best predicted choices in a hypothetical budget task and self-reported mitigative behaviour, when controlling for other dimensions of perceived risk, such as perceived severity of the consequences of exposure. The results have implications for designing surveys to measure perceived risk of environmental health hazards.

Disease, death, morality, and politics: Pathogen prevalence, terror management, and conservatism as motivated social cognition

ABSTRACT We examined the effect of pathogen and mortality salience on moral values and political orientation, testing competing hypotheses derived from three relevant perspectives. While Terror Management Theory (TMT) predicts a delayed shift toward preexisting moral values and political orientation, Pathogen Prevalence Hypothesis (PPH) anticipates a shift toward binding moral foundations, and Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition (PCMSC) posits a shift toward political Principlism. This was an experimental study with salience type (mortality, pathogen, control) and delay (immediate, delayed) as independent variables. The effect of pathogen salience on moral foundations and political orientation was consistent with TMT. Also, there was a delayed PPH-directed effect of pathogen salience on moral foundations, and a PCMSC-consistent effect of pathogen salience on political orientation. Findings are discussed in light of possible differences in the timeline of effects and provided insight to reconcile contradictory predictions of the three perspectives.

Probing Digital Footprints and Reaching for Inherent Preferences: A Cause-Disentanglement Approach to Personalized Recommendations

This study introduces DISC (Disentangling consumers’ Inherent preferences, item Salience effect, and Conformity effect), a novel personalized recommendation approach that leverages disentangled representation learning and causal graph modeling to provide interpretable and effective recommendations. By analyzing consumer behavior across various shopping stages, DISC identifies and differentiates the inherent factors that influence purchasing decisions. DISC cuts through biases to pinpoint consumers’ inherent preferences driving purchases, empowering platforms with the ability to deliver tailored recommendations that resonate deeply with users. Through extensive experiments on real-world data sets, DISC significantly outperforms existing methods, demonstrating its superiority in both in-sample prediction and generating recommendations that align with consumers’ true interests. With its robust performance and theoretical underpinnings, DISC holds promising implications for e-commerce platforms seeking to enhance recommendation accuracy, interpretability, and user engagement.

Do Pandemics Trigger Death Thoughts?

The current article aims to investigate the effects of pandemics of varying severity on death-thought accessibility in two studies while controlling for health anxiety. Study 1 ( n = 203) examined the effect of standard mortality salience (MS), severe pandemic, mild pandemic, and dental conditions on death-thought accessibility as assessed by the death word fragment task (DWFT). Study 1 did not find significant effects of MS and delay on death-thought accessibility, which could be attributable to the less-sensitive nature of the DWFT. Thus, Study 2 ( n = 163) was conducted with more sensitive death-thought accessibility measures. Results from Study 2 found that response time toward death and positive words on the lexical-decision task was significantly faster than in standard MS and dental conditions. Both studies recruited predominantly Americans (Study 1) and Europeans (Study 2), which limits the generalizability of the results to other populations. Future studies can consider replicating the studies in other populations.

Effects of secondary task eccentricity and visual salience on attention allocation in multitasking across screens

In digital control rooms, operators often need to monitor multiple information sources, which are spatially distributed on multiple screens, to manage multiple tasks simultaneously. Operators’ attention allocation between tasks are likely to be affected by the visual salience and eccentricity of secondary task screens. Their exact impacts and underlying mechanisms need to be investigated to inform system design to support balanced attention allocation strategies for optimal multitasking performance. This study aims to address these issues through a laboratory experiment using a simulated unmanned aerial vehicle monitoring platform. The participants performed a primary task and two secondary tasks concurrently, each shown on a separated screen. The visual salience and eccentricity of the maintenance task (one of the secondary tasks) were manipulated within-groups. Attention allocation behaviors were captured by eye movement data, and performance of both primary and secondary tasks were recorded. The participants were more likely to switch to and spent more time on the maintenance task of lower salience, showing a tendency to override the bottom-up influence of secondary task salience with top-down control. Large eccentricity of the secondary task, however, led to less attention allocation and lower task prioritization in paired event conflicts. The interaction effect of the salience and eccentricity of the maintenance task was significant for the accuracy of the primary task and the other secondary task. These findings offered insights into the joint design of salience and eccentricity of secondary tasks to enhance overall multitasking performance.

The effects of mortality salience on perceived risk and trust in the managing bodies of nuclear power: The moderating effect of nuclear power support

AbstractPublic concern regarding nuclear power has arisen due to accidents involving radiation leakages, natural disasters, terrorism, war and other incidents. That is, people's concerns regarding the use of nuclear power have grown as situations that threaten their survival have increased. This study uses terror management theory to examine how mortality salience affects people's risk perception and trust in the managing bodies of nuclear power. The results of Study 1 and Study 2 revealed that when the level of support for nuclear power is low, the effect of mortality salience increases trust in the managing bodies. Study 2's findings reveal mortality salience leads to decreased risk perception of nuclear power. In the case of risks that are managed by others and that are difficult to understand, such as nuclear power, people tend to place higher value on the managing bodies because they cannot handle the risk themselves. These results highlight the changes in people's perceptions of nuclear power managing bodies when they are conscious of death and provide important information on the nature of communication between citizens and experts regarding nuclear power.

The role of cue salience in prospective memory commission errors in nonperformed nonfocal tasks.

Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to execute an intention in the future without having a permanent reminder. These intentions can be performed when they are not relevant or become no-longer needed, the so-called "commission errors". The present study aims to understand the effect of cue salience on PM commission errors with unperformed intentions and on the ongoing task performance-associated costs. Through a between-subjects design, eighty-one participants were assigned to 3 conditions: the no-PM condition, which served as control, and the salient and nonsalient conditions, which were asked to perform a lexical decision task and an incomplete nonfocal prospective memory task (i.e. no PM cues were presented). Subsequently, participants were instructed to no longer execute the prospective intention. In the second phase, a lexical decision task occurred again, including irrelevant PM cues, which should not be answered as such. In the salient condition, cues were salient (i.e. presented in red or blue background). In contrast, in the nonsalient condition, PM cues appeared on a black background, as any other stimuli. In the no-PM control condition, participants only performed an LDT. A commission error occurred when the (irrelevant) intention was performed in this second phase. Results showed that more participants performed a commission error in the presence of salient cues, even when PM intentions became irrelevant. Additionally, when cues were not salient, participants took longer to answer the LDT, as reasoned by the spontaneous retrieval theory. These findings are discussed according to the dual-mechanism account.

Being a member of global community: the effect of Chinese brand origin salience on global identity perceptions and brand evaluations

PurposeGiven that Chinese brands and products are widespread in the global market, this paper aims to examine the effect of Chinese brand origin salience (vs not) on brand evaluations by increasing global identity perceptions, and figuring out the moderating role of uncertainty avoidance.Design/methodology/approachThree experiments were conducted in different product categories to test the effect of Chinese brand origin salience. Study 1 and Study 2 collected data from different countries (i.e. Japan and the USA) with varying levels of uncertainty avoidance. In Study 3, the data were collected from the single-country sample, including participants from cultural backgrounds with high (Asian Americans) and low (Caucasian Americans) uncertainty avoidance.FindingsChinese brand origin salience positively influences brand evaluations via increased global identity perceptions. In addition, uncertainty avoidance plays a moderating role in the process. Specifically, the favorable effect of Chinese brand origin salience on brand evaluations will be attenuated among consumers with high (vs low) uncertainty avoidance.Originality/valueThis paper demonstrates that Chinese brand origin salience can enhance brand evaluations beyond prior work focusing on the negative stereotypes of Chinese brands and their imitation of Western brands. Importantly, Chinese brands have become an important part of the global community as Chinese brand origin salience can evoke consumers’ global identity.

Examining mediating and moderating influences among career competencies and leadership aspiration

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between career competencies and leadership aspiration among women IT/ITeS professionals in South India, examining the mediating effects of work role salience and occupational self-efficacy, along with the moderating effect of achievement aspiration.Design/methodology/approachThe sample consists of 348 women professionals working in the IT/ITeS industry in South India. The study adopts a descriptive methodology and employs a cross-sectional research design.FindingsThe result shows that work role salience mediates the relationship between career competencies and leadership aspiration and that this mediation is moderated by achievement aspiration. Additionally, occupational self-efficacy is found to have a supplementary effect on leadership aspiration, further contributing to the model.Research limitations/implicationsDespite the limitations of online data collection, the study showcases adaptability, providing valuable insights into women's career aspirations. It acknowledges opportunities for future research improvements, such as implementing longitudinal frameworks and incorporating a more diverse sample, to enhance the robustness and applicability of findings.Practical implicationsThe study offers valuable insights for managers, researchers and academia, aiding in the identification of crucial competencies for women aspiring to leadership roles, and fostering the retention of top talent in a diverse and inclusive work environment. Individuals can leverage these insights for enhanced career development by recognizing and emphasizing strengths while addressing weaknesses through accurate self-assessments.Originality/valueThis study offers a novel perspective by identifying the essential competencies that are crucial for women to achieve leadership positions, thus making a valuable contribution to the existing literature in the field.

Enough Terror to Belong: The Nonlinear Association of Death Anxiety with Group Identification

Death anxiety is presumed to be positively associated with group identification; however, recent evidence of a null correlation between the two constructs raises questions regarding this assumption. In contrast to the traditional linear perspective, we proposed and tested a J-shaped curvilinear association that only death anxiety beyond a certain threshold predicts group identification. Using two-wave longitudinal data from the UK, study 1 (N=1,402) revealed that only after reaching a moderate-to-high level could death anxiety measured during the COVID-19 pandemic positively predict later identification with the community, one’s country, and all humanity. Furthermore, using World Values Survey data, study 2 (N=56,871) found that death-related anxiety (i.e., worry about a terrorist attack) was only positively associated with perceived closeness to one’s village, county, and country after reaching a moderate-to-high level. Our findings provide a novel insight into the process of managing terror and the replication failure of the mortality salience effect.

Effects of Mortality Salience and Religion on Aggression

The current study aimed to examine the effects of mortality salience (MS) and religion on aggression. Participants were 120 students (58.3% females; 73.3% with religion) from a private university in Singapore. They were randomly assigned to either the MS condition or the control condition, asked to remember a time when they were deeply hurt or offended by a person, and provided an opportunity for revenge by sticking pins into a voodoo doll that represented the person. The results showed that participants in the MS condition inserted a significantly higher number of pins into the voodoo doll than participants in the control condition. However, this effect was not moderated by religion and extent of belief in God. Limitations include the consideration of participants with religion as one group for data analysis. Future research directions include recruiting a larger and more diverse group of participants.

The stuff that nightmares are made of: Israeli dreams in times of the Israel-Hamas war

This qualitative study explored the mortality salience effect as it manifested in the dreams of Israelis in the aftermath of the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023, and during the ensuing war. Over a two-month period, a sample of 242 dreams was collected via an online survey. Two forms of thematic analysis, namely, inductive and deductive, were utilized. Viewed through the theoretical lens of terror management theory, the findings suggest that exposure to the attack’s horrors and the resulting strong mortality salience were reflected in the participants’ dream contents. This indicates that the anxiety-buffering roles of the three psychological coping mechanisms—cultural worldviews, self-esteem, and close personal relationships—have been compromised. The examination of collective dream content offers a glimpse into subtle human psychic processes and how they might be affected during times of national trauma that necessitate robust psychological mechanisms to cope with the heightened mortality salience.

The effects of identity salience on product judgment in a domain of trade-offs

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate a condition under which identity salience effects are weakened. By examining how identity salience influences individuals’ product judgment in a domain of trade-offs, the current research demonstrates that the utilitarian value of a product is an important determinant of the effectiveness of identity salience on product judgment.Design/methodology/approachThis research consists of two experiments. In Experiment 1, the authors examined whether identity salience effects were mitigated when the level of the perceived utilitarian value of an identity-incongruent product was greater than that of an identity-congruent product. In Experiment 2, the authors examined the effectiveness of internal attribution as a moderator that strengthens identity salience effects when the perceived utilitarian value of an identity-incongruent (vs. identity-congruent) product is higher.FindingsIn Experiment 1, the authors show that when the utilitarian value of a product with an attribute congruent (vs. incongruent) with one’s salient identity is lower, individuals do not show a greater preference for the identity-congruent (vs. identity-incongruent) product, mitigating the identity salience effects. Experiment 2 demonstrates that when individuals with a salient identity attribute a decision outcome to the self, they display a greater preference for the identity-congruent product even when its utilitarian value is lower compared to that of the identity-incongruent product.Research limitations/implicationsThe research contributes to previous research examining conditions under which identity salience effects are weakened [e.g. social influence by others (Bolton and Reed, 2004); self-affirmation (Cohen et al., 2007)] by exploring the role of the utilitarian value of a product, which has not been examined yet in prior research. Also, by doing so, the current research adds to the literature on identity salience in a domain of trade-offs (Benjamin et al., 2010; Shaddy et al., 2020, 2021). Finally, this research reveals that when a decision outcome is attributed to the self, identity salience effects become greater. By finding a novel determinant of identity salience effects (i.e. internal attribution), the present research contributes to the literature that has examined factors that amplify identity salience effects [e.g. cultural relevance (Chattaraman et al., 2009); social distinctiveness (Forehand et al., 2002); different types of groups (White and Dahl, 2007)].Practical implicationsThe findings provide managerial insights on identity-based marketing by showing a condition under which identity-based marketing does not work [i.e. when the utilitarian value of an identity-congruent (vs. identity-incongruent) product is lower] and how to enhance the effectiveness of identity-based marketing by using internal attribution.Originality/valueBy exploring the role of utilitarian value, not yet examined in prior research, the present research adds to the knowledge of the conditions under which identity salience effects are weakened. Furthermore, by finding a novel determinant of identity salience effects (i.e. internal attribution), the research contributes to the literature on factors that amplify identity salience effects.

Eye and head movements in visual search in the extended field of view

In natural environments, head movements are required to search for objects outside the field of view (FoV). Here we investigate the power of a salient target in an extended visual search array to facilitate faster detection once this item comes into the FoV by a head movement. We conducted two virtual reality experiments using spatially clustered sets of stimuli to observe target detection and head and eye movements during visual search. Participants completed search tasks with three conditions: (1) target in the initial FoV, (2) head movement needed to bring the target into the FoV, (3) same as condition 2 but the periphery was initially hidden and appeared after the head movement had brought the location of the target set into the FoV. We measured search time until participants found a more salient (O) or less salient (T) target among distractors (L). On average O’s were found faster than T’s. Gaze analysis showed that saliency facilitation occurred due to the target guiding the search only if it was within the initial FoV. When targets required a head movement to enter the FoV, participants followed the same search strategy as in trials without a visible target in the periphery. Moreover, faster search times for salient targets were only caused by the time required to find the target once the target set was reached. This suggests that the effect of stimulus saliency differs between visual search on fixed displays and when we are actively searching through an extended visual field.

Relative saliency affects attentional capture and suppression of color and face singleton distractors: evidence from event-related potential studies.

Prior research has yet to fully elucidate the impact of varying relative saliency between target and distractor on attentional capture and suppression, along with their underlying neural mechanisms, especially when social (e.g. face) and perceptual (e.g. color) information interchangeably serve as singleton targets or distractors, competing for attention in a search array. Here, we employed an additional singleton paradigm to investigate the effects of relative saliency on attentional capture (as assessed by N2pc) and suppression (as assessed by PD) of color or face singleton distractors in a visual search task by recording event-related potentials. We found that face singleton distractors with higher relative saliency induced stronger attentional processing. Furthermore, enhancing the physical salience of colors using a bold color ring could enhance attentional processing toward color singleton distractors. Reducing the physical salience of facial stimuli by blurring weakened attentional processing toward face singleton distractors; however, blurring enhanced attentional processing toward color singleton distractors because of the change in relative saliency. In conclusion, the attentional processes of singleton distractors are affected by their relative saliency to singleton targets, with higher relative saliency of singleton distractors resulting in stronger attentional capture and suppression; faces, however, exhibit some specificity in attentional capture and suppression due to high social saliency.

The Interactive Effect of Incentive Salience and Prosocial Motivation on Prosocial Behavior

Charities often use incentives to increase prosocial action. However, charities sometimes downplay these incentives in their messaging (pilot study), possibly to avoid demotivating donors. We challenge this strategy, examining whether increasing the salience of incentives for prosocial action can in fact motivate charitable behavior. Three controlled experiments (N = 2,203 adults) and a field study with an alumni-donation campaign (N = 22,468 adults) found that more (vs. less) salient incentives are more effective at increasing prosocial behavior when prosocial motivation is low (vs. high). This is because more (vs. less) salient incentives increase relative consideration of self-interest (vs. other-regarding) benefits, which is a stronger driver of behavior at low (vs. high) levels of prosocial motivation. By identifying that prosocial motivation moderates the effect of incentive salience on charitable behavior, and by detailing the underlying mechanism, we advance theory and practice on incentive salience, motivation, and charitable giving.

Top–down and bottom–up information acquisition: Application to financial markets

Recent studies confirm the main prediction of the rational inattention framework that the perceived value of information (top–down) as a key driver of attention. However, these investigations also report stimulus-driven salience effects (bottom–up) that counteract the framework’s predictions. In this manuscript, I propose an extension to the standard rational inattention model by incorporating bottom–up attention processes such as salience-effects through varying information processing costs. Applied to asset pricing with a representative agent a higher information salience generally reduces the cost of information processing (attention) needed for the same level of uncertainty reduction. Due to a substitution effect in the attention allocation across information, an attention-maximizing salience emerges. In general, a higher information salience consistently enhances asset price informativeness.

External cues improve visual working memory encoding in the presence of salient distractors in schizophrenia.

People with schizophrenia (PSZ) are impaired in attentional prioritization of non-salient but relevant stimuli over salient distractors during visual working memory (VWM) encoding. Conversely, guidance of top-down attention by external predictive cues is intact. Yet, it is unknown whether this preserved ability can help PSZ encode more information in the presence of salient distractors. We employed a visuospatial change-detection task using four Gabor patches with differing orientations in 66 PSZ and 74 healthy controls (HCS). Two Gabor patches flickered which were designated either as targets or distractors and either a predictive or a non-predictive cue was displayed to manipulate top-down attention, resulting in four conditions. We observed significant effects of group, salience and cue as well as significant interactions of salience by cue, group by salience and group by cue. Across all conditions, PSZ stored significantly less information in VWM than HCS. PSZ stored significantly less non-flickering than flickering information with a non-predictive cue. However, PSZ stored significantly more flickering and non-flickering information with a predictive cue. Our findings indicate that control of attentional selection is impaired in schizophrenia. We demonstrate that additional top-down information significantly improves performance in PSZ. The observed deficit in attentional control suggests a disturbance of GABAergic inhibition in early visual areas. Moreover, our findings are indicative of a mechanism for enhancing attentional control in PSZ, which could be utilized by pro-cognitive interventions. Thus, the current paradigm is suitable to reveal both preserved and compromised cognitive component processes in schizophrenia.