Attention theft

Short description: Concept in marketing and psychology

Billboards are a commonly cited example of attention theft.

Attention theft is a theory in economic sociology and psychology which describes situations in which marketers serve advertisements to consumers who have not consented to view them and who are given nothing in return. Perpetrators seek to distract targets' attention through the use of advertising content, thereby achieving a form of manipulation.[1][2][3]

Attention theft has been criticized as an example of unethical marketing. It is related to the concept of the attention economy,[1] which posits that attention is a scarce resource and applies economic theory to it.[3]

## Contents

* 1 Psychological basis
* 2 Examples
* 3 Criticism
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links

## Psychological basis

People are susceptible to attention theft because they tend by default to pay attention to whatever stimuli in their environment are most noticeable, a phenomenon known in psychology as exogenous orienting.[2] Advertisers are able to serve content deliberately engineered to be distracting, making it difficult to ignore.[2][4] Examples of this type of content can include bold animations, crowded designs, and frequent or unnecessary notifications.[citation needed]

Sound trucks are frequently used in Japan to broadcast political or commercial messages in residential neighbourhoods.

## Examples

Commonly cited examples of attention theft include billboards, apps that send out promotional notifications, sound trucks, email spam, and TV screens with mostly or entirely promotional content in locations with a captive audience, such as gas stations, airplanes, waiting rooms, and taxis.[1][2][5]

## Criticism

Critics of attention theft characterize it as a type of unethical marketing.[1] They argue that it contributes to information overload, leading to negative health outcomes, and infringes upon freedom of thought.[1] Writing in Wired in 2017, legal scholar Tim Wu urged municipal governments to pass laws prohibiting some instances of attention theft.[1] He and others fear that imminent technological advances may increase the pervasiveness of the phenomenon.[1][2]

## See also

* Attention economy
* Digital zombie
* Information pollution
* Red herring
* Time sink

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Wu, Tim (April 14, 2017). "The Crisis of Attention Theft—Ads That Steal Your Time for Nothing in Return". Wired. https://www.wired.com/2017/04/forcing-ads-captive-audience-attention-theft-crime/. Retrieved 9 August 2021.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 McFedries, Paul (22 May 2014). "Stop, Attention Thief!" (in en). IEEE Spectrum (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). https://spectrum.ieee.org/stop-attention-thief.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 McCullough, Malcolm (2013). Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-31348-3.
4. ↑ Gazzaley, Adam; Rosen, Larry D. (2013). The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World. MIT Press. ISBN 978-1-60883-818-9.
5. ↑ Hayes, Tom (3 September 2017). "Next Up for the Internet: The Attention Rights Movement". http://tombomb.com/2009/01/next-up-for-the-internet-the-attention-rights-movement.html.

## External links

Template:Marketing navigation bar

* v
* t
* e

Psychology

* History
* Philosophy
* Portal
* Psychologist

Basic psychology|

* Abnormal
* Affective science
* Affective neuroscience
* Behavioral genetics
* Behavioral neuroscience
* Behaviorism
* Cognitive/Cognitivism
* Cognitive neuroscience
* Social
* Comparative
* Cross-cultural
* Cultural
* Developmental
* Differential
* Ecological
* Evolutionary
* Experimental
* Gestalt
* Intelligence
* Mathematical
* Moral
* Neuropsychology
* Perception
* Personality
* Positive
* Psycholinguistics
* Psychophysiology
* Quantitative
* Social
* Theoretical

Applied psychology|

* Anomalistic
* Applied behavior analysis
* Assessment
* Clinical
* Coaching
* Community
* Consumer
* Counseling
* Critical
* Educational
* Ergonomics
* Feminist
* Forensic
* Health
* Industrial and organizational
* Legal
* Media
* Medical
* Military
* Music
* Occupational health
* Pastoral
* Political
* Psychometrics
* Psychotherapy
* Religion
* School
* Sport and exercise
* Suicidology
* Systems
* Traffic

Methodologies|

* Animal testing
* Archival research
* Behavior epigenetics
* Case study
* Content analysis
* Experiments
* Human subject research
* Interviews
* Neuroimaging
* Observation
* Psychophysics
* Qualitative research
* Quantitative research
* Self-report inventory
* Statistical surveys

Psychologists

* Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920)
* William James (1842–1910)
* Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936)
* Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
* Edward Thorndike (1874–1949)
* Carl Jung (1875–1961)
* John B. Watson (1878–1958)
* Clark L. Hull (1884–1952)
* Kurt Lewin (1890–1947)
* Jean Piaget (1896–1980)
* Gordon Allport (1897–1967)
* J. P. Guilford (1897–1987)
* Carl Rogers (1902–1987)
* Erik Erikson (1902–1994)
* B. F. Skinner (1904–1990)
* Donald O. Hebb (1904–1985)
* Ernest Hilgard (1904–2001)
* Harry Harlow (1905–1981)
* Raymond Cattell (1905–1998)
* Abraham Maslow (1908–1970)
* Neal E. Miller (1909–2002)
* Jerome Bruner (1915–2016)
* Donald T. Campbell (1916–1996)
* Hans Eysenck (1916–1997)
* Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001)
* David McClelland (1917–1998)
* Leon Festinger (1919–1989)
* George A. Miller (1920–2012)
* Richard Lazarus (1922–2002)
* Stanley Schachter (1922–1997)
* Robert Zajonc (1923–2008)
* Albert Bandura (b. 1925)
* Roger Brown (1925–1997)
* Endel Tulving (b. 1927)
* Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987)
* Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
* Ulric Neisser (1928–2012)
* Jerome Kagan (b. 1929)
* Walter Mischel (1930–2018)
* Elliot Aronson (b. 1932)
* Daniel Kahneman (b. 1934)
* Paul Ekman (b. 1934)
* Michael Posner (b. 1936)
* Amos Tversky (1937–1996)
* Bruce McEwen (b. 1938)
* Larry Squire (b. 1941)
* Richard E. Nisbett (b. 1941)
* Martin Seligman (b. 1942)
* Ed Diener (b. 1946)
* Shelley E. Taylor (b. 1946)
* John Anderson (b. 1947)
* Ronald C. Kessler (b. 1947)
* Joseph E. LeDoux (b. 1949)
* Richard Davidson (b. 1951)
* Susan Fiske (b. 1952)
* Roy Baumeister (b. 1953)

Lists|

* Counseling topics
* Disciplines
* Important publications
* Organizations
* Outline
* Psychologists
* Psychotherapies
* Research methods
* Schools of thought
* Timeline
* Topics

* Wiktionary definition
* Wiktionary category
* Wikisource
* Wikimedia Commons
* Wikiquote
* Wikinews
* Wikibooks

0.00

(0 votes)

Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention theft. Read more

|

Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Social:Attention_theft&oldid=4303686"
*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template