Salience is the state or condition of being prominent. The Oxford English Dictionary defines salience as "most noticeable or important." The concept is discussed in communication, semiotics, linguistics, sociology, psychology, and political science. It has been studied with respect to interpersonal communication, persuasion, politics, and its influence on mass media.
Semiotics
In semiotics (the study of signs or symbolism), salience refers to the relative importance or prominence of a part of a sign. The salience of a particular sign when considered in the context of others helps an individual to quickly rank large amounts of information by importance and thus give attention to that which is the most important. This process keeps an individual from being overwhelmed with information overload.
Discussion
Meaning can be described as the "system of mental representations of an object or phenomenon, its properties and associations with other objects and/or phenomena. In the consciousness of an individual, meaning is reflected in the form of sensory information, s and concepts." It is denotative or connotative, but the sign system for transmitting meanings can be uncertain in its operation or conditions may disrupt the communication and prevent accurate meanings from being decoded.
Further, meaning is socially constructed and dynamic as the culture evolves. Each has their own frame of reference, which leads to divergence of sensibilities and true richness in diversity. So the salience of data will be determined by both situational and emotional elements in a combination relatively unique to each individual. For example, a person with an interest in botany may allocate greater salience to visual data involving plants, and a person trained as an architect may scan buildings to identify features of interest. A person's world view or Weltanschauung may predispose salience to data matching those views. Because people live for many years, responses become conventional. At a group or community level, the conventional levels of significance or salience are slowly embedded in the sign systems and culture, and they cannot arbitrarily be changed. For example, the first thing seen in a poster may be the title or picture of a face.
Communication studies The noun "salience" derives from the Latin word saliens - ‘leaping, or bounding’. In a human embryo, the heart tissue is beating and leaping. A Native American may pay no attention to Columbus Day protests until after instruction in tribal and historical Indian traditions (priming). After gaining new cultural insights, these protests may become "salient."
Salience, as a component of Communication and Social Psychology studies, asks the question of why something captures and holds our attention and why it is more readily available as a cognition than other facts, feelings, and emotions? When a person perceives and reacts, they use the information and emotions most readily accessible. This information is understood to be the most salient information.
Social Influence is an area of intense study for Social Psychologists and Communication theorists. Social Influence asks how and why, are people influenced to weaken a strongly held position, adopt a new position, change an attitude, or persuade someone? The extent that the communicator can understand and harness the power of Social Influence is the extent that they can succeed in their goal.
Salience has been identified as one of the key ideas that guides our understanding of how to make a point of view stand out from among others and draw the receivers attention to the salient points of the encoded message. Salience is then an important concept in several theories relating to Social Influence. Some areas of Communication and Social Psychology research that include the concept of salience as a component of their theory are: Persuasion Theory, Vested Interest, Summation Theory of Attitude Change, Group Salience, and Social Presence Theory. The use of salience in these theories is summarized below:
Persuasion theory: Salience is the critical concept, along with agenda and spin, for the Persuasion theory of Professor Richard E. Vatz of Towson University as articulated in his book, /The Only Authentic Book of Persuasion/, (Kendall Hunt, 2012, 2013). Salience, in his book and articles, is used as a measure of how reality is created for chosen audiences. He claims (1973) (2013) that the struggle for salience (and agenda and meaning and spin) is the sine qua non of the persuasive process.
Vested interest (communication theory): William Crano's states that, "Vested Interest refers to the extent to which an attitude object is hedonically relevant for the attitude holder" (Crano, 1995, p. 131). In order for someone to have a vested interest in something, it must be perceived to affect their lives personally. Things that in which we are highly vested also bear on our behavior (Crano, 1995), and it must be salient or leap out. Vivid cues are more likely to grab our attention (McArthur & Post, 1977). If an attitude object is salient to us, our vested interest will be increased as well as the likelihood that our behavior and attitudes will be consistent (Sears & Citrin, 1985).
Crano states, "Apparently, making an attitude object more salient enhances the salience of attitude-relevant outcomes as well. Vividness, priming, and similar operations may all enhance the salience of the self-interest implications of a position." (Crano, 1995, p. 131). The stronger the salience of our attitude, the stronger will be the connection between our attitude object and our behavior.
Attitude Summation Theory: Fishbein posited that we have many beliefs about an attitude object (characteristics, attributes, values, etc.). Each belief held is argued to have an affective (feeling) and evaluative (value determining) component. An attitude is then a mediated evaluative response (Fishbein, 1963). These attitudes sum together to form our overall view of the attitude object and comes to the forefront (made salient) when we engage the attitude object.
Fishbein indicates that we can hold six to nine salient beliefs at a time (Cronen, 1973). Those manifested during the attitude object encounter determine the prevailing attitude. Fishbein believed that the strongest held beliefs would be the most salient and come to the fore. Cronen argued that salience is not intrinsically tied to strength, but is an independent attribute of attitude change, as some strongly held beliefs are non-salient (Cronen, 1973).
Group Salience: Group salience is a person's cognizance of fellow group members similarities and differences within a group interaction (Harwood et al., 2006). Within a group, communication is the primary way that we determine salience of attitudes. Other things such as physical attributes can be observed, but deeper feelings will have to be communicated within the group to make them salient (Harwood et al., 2006). Coupland et al., suggest that communication processes represent an individual's identity within the group (Coupland et al., 1991).
Social presence theory (SPT): SPT can be defined as, "The degree to which a person is perceived to be a real person in mediated communication." (Gunwadena, 1995) This is an update on the original definition, developed by Short, Williams and Christie (1976), which stated, "The degree of salience of the other person in an interaction."
What makes something salient? How does the mind select, structure and impart meaning to stimuli? People "develop and stabilize" cognitions about stimuli by an "examination of action, intention, ability and environment." (Taylor & Fiske, 1978, citing Heider, 1934, as their source, p. 250). Individuals have limited cognitive resources and abilities to process and comprehend information and situational complexity. A person cannot grasp every nuance of a stimuli required to assign its full and complete meaning. Salience is the way researchers understand what information will most likely capture one's attention in a given situation and have the greatest influence on one's cognitions about the stimuli. Research has shown that the most salient information is not always the most accurate or important, but a "Top of the Head Phenomenon" (Taylor & Fiske, 1978). People are not fully conscious of the extent to which salience affects them. In experimental studies, individuals generated strong cognitions with only slight manipulation of stimuli. When shown this fact, the participant reacted strongly to the idea that they made choices based on "trivial" information (Taylor & Fiske, 1978).
"Salience has generally been treated as a propriety [conforming to standard norms of morality and behavior] of a stimulus which allows it to stand out and be noticed" (Guido, 1998, p. 114). Guido developed the Theory of Dichotic Salience after a review of some 1,200 studies, which pointed to a "common origin among salience instances, by emphasizing the nature of prominence which is intrinsic to any salience construct" (Guido, 1998, Abstract, p. 114). According to this theory, a stimulus is "in-salient" if it is not in harmony with perceiver's worldview. It is "re-salient" if it is in harmony with the perceiver's goals (Guido, 1998).
Salience is a construct that depends on the ability of the mind to access the feelings or emotions (affect) generated by the salient stimulus. The activation in memory of cognitions that relate to and evaluate the stimulus. And finally, the availability of these mental resources to engage the stimulus (Guido, 1998).
A schema (psychology) is a cognitive framework or concept through which one organizes and interprets information. Schemas provide shortcuts in sorting and interpreting the enormous quantity of information generated in one's environment. The limitation of such a construct, is that it may cause one to exclude pertinent facts and feelings about a situation. Instead one may focus on only those that harmonize with one's biases, beliefs and ideations.
Schemas are very useful as they help one to decide about things with very little information. This simplification filters how one allocates cognitive resources. It also allows one to learn more readily and rapidly, if the learning fits within an already established schema. A schema allows for quick access to stored cognitions and filtering through pre-established algorithms, which saves time in processing and retrieving information. Because they are so useful and reliable in helping one make sense of the world, schemas can be hard to change. Thomas Kuhn (1962), in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, talks about how scientists, considered the most rationale and fact driven professionals, can be so committed to their schemas that they ignore or misinterpret relevant data gathered from experiments that is contrary to their notions. One challenge for communicators is to find a way to break through these hardened perceptions in order to persuade. Making an idea salient is one of the keys.
Guido's Principle one is figure-ground, which is the means the perceptual field from which people direct their attention towards something that stands out. Figurality is the brightness, complexity, and energy (movement) of a stimulus. It is thought that these aspects trigger cognitions and thought processes in the brain that lead to salience. Brightness includes the magnitude and the colors of the object. Studies have shown that bright, vibrant colors more easily capture the attention and are easier to remember (Guido, 1998).