This is a Lexicon entry: the mechanism, when it shows up, and the countermeasure. The full correction, with real-world cases and the audit prompt, hasn't been written yet.
Definition
The tendency to focus more intensely on certain stimuli or information while ignoring others, especially stimuli that are emotionally charged or personally relevant.
When it shows up
When your mood or priming sets a filter: anxious people noticing threats, hungry people noticing food cues, investors focused on one sector seeing its signals everywhere. Any task where what you look for determines what you see. Modern context: A product manager who has just been criticised for a missed deadline starts noticing every mention of scheduling problems across the organisation - not because they increased in frequency but because the personal salience filter has been activated.
Failure mode
Selection of the sample you observe is driven by the internal state so the evidence gathered confirms the state that produced the looking. Counter-examples never enter the field of attention to be weighed.
Countermeasure
Ask what a person in the opposite mood would notice in the same scene. Deliberately scan for the signal you are not attending to before drawing conclusions from what you did notice. When correction costs more than the bias: When the stimulus you are biased toward noticing is genuinely the most relevant one. A threat-primed security professional noticing anomalies is being effective, not biased. Attentional bias becomes a problem when the filter mismatches the environment, not merely when it exists.
Related traps
Also connected in the map10 more, locked
Credit & first seen
DiscoveredExtensively studied in cognitive psychology and clinical research, particularly in relation to anxiety and addiction.
Also revealed
Entry #3 of 631 in The Lexicon · see the full Lexicon