Selective Attention and Learning

What do we notice, and how does this affect what we learn? Standard economic models of learning ignore memory by assuming that we remember everything. But there is growing recognition that memory is imperfect. Further, memory imperfections do not stem from limited recall alone; rather, not all information will be encoded into memory. Professor Schwartzstein has developed a model of belief formation that recognizes that attention is selective, and that we narrow our attention to what we currently believe is worthwhile. This model makes predictions about when people will attend to the right variables, when they will not, and what biased ideas may result. The key insight is that such inattention may compound itself—a person may persistently fail to learn what is worth attending to. In experimental research, Professor Schwartzstein has shown that seaweed farmers in Indonesia consistently failed to recognize a key variable in optimizing production—and that they did respond based on seeing summaries of the researchers’ data.