Attention

He who wants to see everything at once will see nothing. If we react to all the signals that come to us from outside, our behavior will be chaotic. Attention is a system of selecting information that allows us to perceive only information that is significant to us, helping us to respond only to what is important to us or is of interest to us.

Involuntary attention usually reacts to everything new, bright, loud and moving. Arbitrary and post-arbitrary — to what we choose ourselves.

Attention is a concentrated energy of consciousness directed to a particular object. Attention can be likened to a ray or stream of light: what attention is directed to becomes clearer for us, illuminated by the light of consciousness.

The most famous definition given to attention by William James: “Everyone knows what attention is. This is when the mind embraces in a clear and distinct form something of what is seen simultaneously as several possible objects or trains of thought. Concentration, concentration of consciousness is its essence. It means a distraction from some things in order to work effectively with others, and is a condition that has a real opposite in that confused, twilight and scattered consciousness, which in French is called distraction, and in German Zerstreutheit ”(James, 1890) .

If attention is directed to one’s own thinking or inner feelings, it is called inner attention. External attention is directed to the objects of the external world and to ourselves, if we consider ourselves as an external object.

Attention is not an independent mental process, but a qualitative characteristic of perception, memory, thinking, which ensures the selective nature of mental activity, the implementation of the choice of a given object in it from a certain field of possible objects.

Since attention is understood only as direction, it cannot be considered as at least some independent process. Since attention is present in any conscious activity, to the extent that it is an integral part of cognitive processes, and, moreover, the side in which they act as an activity directed at an object; insofar as it does not have its own special content. At the same time, the relationship between activity and image is expressed in a specific way — the content of attention is determined depending on which side of which mental process it acts: if perception, then as an image of an object, or a phenomenon of reality; if thinking, then as a thought, if recollection or imagination, then as a representation, etc.

However, attention is not only light, but also energy, enabling a person to better control what he directed this energy in himself to.

Directing attention to your hands, you can feel their relaxation and heaviness. Attention to relaxation and heaviness in the hands is the energy that helps to change tension into relaxation. By carefully monitoring our movements, we make them more accurate. Carefully choosing words, we choose the best of them.

Another common metaphor for attention is the thread that binds us to something. The person to whom our attention is drawn all the time is at first an interesting person for us, then significant, and in the end becomes beloved. Why? Because living attention is usually followed by small, but actions, attention in life is called not only an internal mental process, but also petty worldly care, expressing a warm attitude towards someone or something.

He gave his hand, listened to the end, opened the door and let me go ahead — all these are everyday manifestations of attention.

What we pay attention to becomes important to us, becomes our attention of vital value. If we begin to pay attention to any person, this person becomes more and more significant for us.

Many people are surprisingly convinced that attention cannot be controlled, and that what their attention turned out to be directed to is the only possible reality. «What else can you see here?» They are sure that the environment (internal or external) forces them to focus on certain subjects in the way they do it. They deny their own participation in the choice of what to switch attention to, which stimuli to select from their entire kaleidoscope, and argue that it is the stimuli that force them to look and focus in a certain way.

Managing the attention of others

Women tend to attract attention more than men. Gesture signs of this are hands in the format of «Soviet circus». See Hands of Salutation and Attractiveness