Behavioral finance FAQ / Glossary (Attention)

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This is a separate page of the A section of the Glossary

	Dates of related message(s) in the Behavioral-Finance group (*): Year/month, d: developed / discussed, i: incidental
Attention anomaly, bias, disorder, limited attention	00/8i - 02/3i + see selective attention, cognitive overload, tunnel vision, anchoring, heuristic, weak signal, overtrading, boredom, emotion, perception, salience + bfdef2
How come I missed it? We suffer an attention (or attentional) anomaly (or bias) when we do not take notice of something crucial to make a decision. OK, nearly a platitude, but it might raise the reader's ...attention ;-) This occasional or, for some people frequent (*), deficiency, is a blind spot in sensory and mental perception (see that word) (*) If that flaw is highly repetitive, the person is said to suffer an "attention disorder" It is hard to walk and chew gum at the same time or, more seriously, it is easy to: Overlook, neglect or misinterpret the available information. This mental myopia might result from a: Cognitive overload, or habit, anchoring, stereotypes, belief (see those words) or just lack of attention, effort or interest. Focus only on the most apparent future outcomes, because of tunnel vision. What is behind such biases? What can distract or blind the mind? The causes of attention failures can be: Those failures can be: Cognitive biases (as seen above)   Emotions (affect heuristic...) that divert the attention or makes it selective (see selective attention)    Pure habits (autopilot bias).      Information overload and the related stress    Manipulations (see that word) that are used to divert somebody's attention (red herrings...). Occasional, which leads to a few investment mistakes due to neglecting information. Or Repetitive verging on "attention disorders", as a pathology is called. Attention and investing Some studies state that a form of this bias is spreading in today markets. Investors and fund managers seems to get bored and lose interest easily in the assets they hold (this is the opposite of the "endowment bias" that is common in other people). They move to other assets, in fits of hyperactivity (see overtrading and also ...boredom). This is a kind of reverse "divesture aversion".