Interlude LXXXVIII: Attention | William James, Michael Posner, Selective Attention, Perception, Focus, and Decision-Making

What decides what you notice before you decide what to do?

Why can two people experience the same conversation, walk away with completely different memories, and both feel certain they saw what mattered?

Why does one critical sentence eclipse ten compliments?

Why can one worried thought dominate an otherwise ordinary morning?

And how much of what we call choice has already been shaped by what attention allowed into consideration?

In Interlude LXXXVIII of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey continues the arc Agency and the Human Will by moving one step upstream from decision-making.

Before we choose an action, something has already selected what receives mental priority.

That leads to the central insight of the episode:

Your life isn’t made only from what happens to you. It’s made from what repeatedly earns your attention.

Drawing on psychologist and philosopher William James and cognitive neuroscientist Michael Posner, this episode explores attention, selective attention, perception, attentional bias, executive control, awareness, anxiety, focus, cognitive selection, decision-making, and human agency.

William James and the Psychology of Attention

In The Principles of Psychology, William James offered one of the most memorable descriptions of attention: