Attention and choice across domains.

When people are faced with a decision, they tend to choose the option that draws their attention. In recent years, correlations between attention and choice have been documented in a variety of domains. This leads to the question of whether there is a general, stable relationship between attention and choice. Here, we examined choice behavior in tasks with and without risk and social considerations, using food or monetary rewards, within a single experiment. This allowed us to test the consistency of the decision-making process across domains. In the aggregate, we identified remarkable consistency in the attention-choice link. At the individual level, subjects with strong attentional effects in one task were likely to have strong attentional effects in the others. The strength of these effects also correlated with individuals' degree of tunnel vision. Thus, the attention-choice relationship appears to be a stable individual trait that is linked to more general attentional constraints. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).