SALIENCE EFFECTImagine the issue of

SALIENCE EFFECT
Imagine the issue of marijuana has been dominating the media for the past few
months. Television shows portray potheads, clandestine growers and dealers. The
tabloid press prints photos of 12-year-old girls smoking joints. Broadsheets roll out
the medical arguments and illuminate the societal, even philosophical aspects of the
substance. Marijuana is on everyone’s lips. Let’s assume for a moment that smoking
does not affect driving in any way. Just as anyone can wind up in an accident, a
driver with a joint is also involved in a crash every now and then – purely
coincidentally.
Kurt is a local journalist. One evening, he happens to drive past the scene of
an accident. A car is wrapped around a tree trunk. Since Kurt has a very good
relationship with the local police, he learns that they found marijuana in the back
seat of the car. He hurries back to the newsroom and writes this headline: ‘Marijuana
Kills Yet Another Motorist’.
As stated above, we are assuming that the statistical relationship between
marijuana and car accidents is zero. Thus, Kurt’s headline is unfounded. He has
fallen victim to the salience effect. Salience refers to a prominent feature, a standout
attribute, a particularity, something that catches your eye. The salience effect ensures
that outstanding features receive much more attention than they deserve. Since
marijuana is the salient feature of this accident, Kurt believes that it is responsible for
the crash.
A few years later, Kurt moves into business journalism. One of the largest
companies in the world has just announced that it is promoting a woman to CEO.
This is big news! Kurt snaps open his laptop and begins to write his commentary:
the woman in question, he types, got the post simply because she is female. In truth,
the promotion probably had nothing to do with gender, especially since men fill
most top positions. If it were so important to have women as leaders, other
companies would have acted by now. But in this news story, gender is the salient
feature and thus it earns undue weight.
Not only journalists fall prey to the salience effect. We all do. Two men rob a
bank and are arrested shortly after. It transpires that they are Nigerian. Although no
ethnic group is responsible for a disproportionate number of bank robberies, this
salient fact distorts our thinking. Lawless immigrants at it again, we think. If an
Armenian commits rape, it is attributed to the ‘Armenians’ rather than other factors
that also exist among Americans. Thus, prejudices form. That the vast majority of
immigrants live lawful lives is easily forgotten. We always recall the undesirable
exceptions – they are particularly salient. Therefore, whenever immigrants are
involved it is the striking, negative incidents that come to mind first.
The salience effect influences not only how we interpret the past, but also how
we imagine the future. Daniel Kahneman and his fellow researcher Amos Tversky
found that we place unwarranted emphasis on salient information when we are
forecasting. This explains why investors are more sensitive to sensational news (i.e.
the dismissal of a CEO) than they are to less striking information (such as the long
term growth of a company’s profits). Even professional analysts cannot always
evade the salience effect.
In conclusion: salient information has an undue influence on how you think
and act. We tend to neglect hidden, slow-to-develop, discrete factors. Do not be
blinded by irregularities. A book with an unusual, fire-engine red jacket makes it on
to the bestseller list. Your first instinct is to attribute the success of the book to the
memorable cover. Don’t. Gather enough mental energy to fight against seemingly
obvious explanations./