Salience: Why Is What Stands Out Not Necessarily Important?

Salience is the tendency of an object to enter attention more readily within a particular context. A red dot on white paper or a bell in a quiet room stands out through contrast. A red notification badge also carries learned value: experience has linked it with a new message and a possible reward.

Salience is not the same as importance. A badge may be conspicuous without mattering more than the work already under way, while an important risk may remain unobtrusive because it develops slowly or feels familiar. Nor is salience identical to relevance. Salience concerns what captures attention first; relevance concerns what bears on the present task.

Salience is relational rather than a permanent property of an object. Change the background, goal or learning history, and the same item may receive a different priority. Research also distinguishes physical from value-driven salience: physical contrast can speed attentional orienting, while learned value can strengthen selection. The concept therefore gives us a useful question for interfaces, news and ordinary judgement: am I attending to this because it matters, or because it has been made difficult to ignore?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7343324/