Salience

Having the property of distinctiveness, prominence, or obviousness, and refers to any aspect of information or content which, for a variety of reasons, stands out from the rest. Salience may result from emotional, motivational, or cognitive factors and is not restricted to physical features of stimuli, such as intensity, size, clarity, etc. Information which is salient tends to have more impact than information which is not. The more salient something is, the more likely it will be to appear causal.

Concrete information is more salient in memory than abstract material – that is, information, for example, which describes a personal experience is more easily recalled than, say, a summary of statistical data. This tendency has important effects upon judgement. For a person contemplating the purchase of a motor car, observations of the positive or negative experience that a neighbour or acquaintance has with a particular model are liable to be vividly recalled – and may therefore weigh more heavily in their judgement – in contrast, perhaps, to extensive statistical information published by consumer affairs’ magazines, independent testing bodies, or by government department(s) charged with disseminating information about vehicle safety, fuel efficiency, reliability and maintenance comparisons, and so on. (see: statistical reasoning)

(see also: Vividness, Availability, Representativeness)