By Steve Wang
Attention blindness means people fail to notice something else when focusing on one thing. To understand this we can look at the situation where you are trying to convince someone of something. To convince some to agree, one must make them see that the proposal is beneficial for them in some way. So, if we can find out what a person deems as most beneficial for them, we can mention it in our conversation first, before we mention the things that they might not like or not as beneficial to them. If we do this, hopefully, they will be too focused on the good things to pay attention to the bad and just agree with what you are saying. If we do not do this and we mention the things that are not beneficial to them first, they might be blind to all the things that might benefit them and they might turn down the offer. To put things into perspective, imagine that you want to convince someone to go on vacation. If you start with, let’s go on vacation, even though the prices are high and the conditions are harsh, we will be able to enjoy the beautiful mountains and the gorgeous sunset. It might go better if you start with. Hey let’s go on vacation, we will be able to enjoy the beautiful mountains and the gorgeous sunset, even though the prices are high and the conditions are harsh, it will be worth it.