IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022 - 11

Opinion
The Currency of the Attentional
Economy: The Uses and Abuses of
Attention in Our World
Jordan Schoenherr
Department of Psychology, Concordia University,
Loyola Campus, Montreal, QC H4B 1R6, Canada
Department of Psychology and Institute of Data
Science, Carleton University, Ottawa,
ON K1S 5B6, Canada
 We live in an attention economy [1]-[3]. People
vie for the attention of allies, customers, followers,
and mates [4] with advertisements, memes, and
websites acting as proxies [5]. This truth defines the
digital age. As Jeff Bezos noted in 1997, " capturing
mindshare on the Internet is extremely difficult...
Attention is the scarce commodity of the late 20th
century " [6]. Like any resource, attention can be
monetized. For instance, a single product placement
can net a social influencer with 100,000 followers
$5,000 [8], [9]. Similarly, ads can be promoted on
search engines and social media, with Google estimating
that companies receive $2 for every dollar
spent promoting an ad [7].
Despite the precious nature of attention, few consider
the composition of the coin of the realm. While
there are many currencies (divided, switching, or
vigilance [10]-[12]), I will consider attention capture
and its bidirectional relationship with memory.
Attention and memory: silent partners
Attentional capture is automatic. Attention can
be captured with " click bait " headlines [13] and
smartphones notifications [14]. Misinformation and
disinformation often grab our attention due their
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2022.3147541
Date of current version: 9 March 2022.
March 2022
relative novelty (i.e., a distinctiveness effect) and we
can spread it without fully considering the content
or source [28].
By capturing attention, we create a memory trace
that influences our representation of the world. Like
pennies in a jar, these memory traces can accumulate
unnoticed over time. They create pathways that
reinforce stimulus-response connections with each
successive encounter [15], [16]. Crucially, these
memory traces guide attention automatically to relevant
features of the environment [17]-[19] and free
us to perform other tasks [20].
Memory retrieval is also automatic [21]. We never
choose to forget our keys, our password, or the
answer to a test. Rather, that information is simply
not retrieved at the right place and time. We might
assume that our most cherished attitudes, beliefs,
and values are qualitatively different than everyday
memories. To our memory systems, they are not. For
instance, attention to appropriate social norms can
reduce prosocial behavior [22], with reminders of
norms increasing prosocial behavior [23], [24]. And
much like any resource, we can deplete our finite
supply of attention [25] leading to reductions in
prosocial behavior [26].
A partial explanation for these findings is that we
tend to be " cognitive misers, " hoarding attentional
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022

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