Psychology of investing attention as a missing dimension

Investing Attention Essential to Viable Growth (Part #3)

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Seemingly missing from the descriptive approach from an economic perspective -- although arguably implicit -- is the psychological engagement of the individual in investing attention. This is partly evident in the literature on time management and its specific focus on attention management. The latter refers to models and tools for supporting the management of attention at the individual or at the collective level, whether in the short-term or over longer periods (Thierry Nabeth, et al, Approaches and Tools for Addressing the Attention Challenge in the Knowledge Economy. 2006).

As qualified by Kay Grossman (Your Attention Investment Portfolio. Focus Dammit, 29 February 2012):

The "time management" solution is not about managing time. Rather, it's about managing ourselves, and more specifically, about managing our attention. Many wiser people before me have asserted that what we pay attention to determines the essence of our reality, let alone what we accomplish in the course of a day.

Grossman continues:

The solution, then, is to consciously choose where to pay attention, to bring intention to the act of attending. Neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg perfectly captures this phenomenon: The best defense against the manipulation of our attention is to determine for ourselves -- in advance -- how we want to invest it... Goldberg's words merit parsing. Let's start with "invest", which implies that there is both value and cost to the allocation of attention. In fact, we implicitly acknowledge that attention is finite and valuable by the ways we talk about it. We give attention, or pay attention. We hold a sense that it is a limited resource.

Psychological capital: Also missing is the relation between investing attention and the accumulation of psychological capital in the work on flow psychology of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990). For Csikszentmihalyi flow is a state where attention can be freely invested to achieve one's goals. He argues: attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience and when we feel that we are investing attention in a task against our will, it is as if our psychic energy is being wasted. With Jeanne Nakamura, in the Encyclopedia of Positive Psychology (2011), their understanding of positive psychological capital is defined as the positive and developmental state of an individual as characterized by high self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resiliency.

We call PK [psychological capital] the ability to allocate attention so as to generate positive experiences in the present, and in ways that are likely to provide positive experiences in the future as well.... When a person is able to derive positive experiences from the moment, while at the same time doing something that is likely to improve the quality of experience in the future, that person is forming psychological capital. The ability to choose a desirable focus for one's attention, and the ability to keep attention concentrated on desired objects, is what makes the building of capital possible

Four ways of investing attention (reproduced from Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura, 2011)
		Is the experience positive now?
		Yes	No
Is it likely to be positive in the future?	Yes	capital formation	postponed gratification
	No	resources consumed	resources wasted

Framing experience of life: This emphasis contrasts somewhat with that of Winifred Gallagher, as a behavioural science author, who argues that how what attention is paid determines how life is experienced. As summarized:

Rapt makes the radical argument that much of the quality of your life depends not on fame or fortune, beauty or brains, fate or coincidence, but on what you choose to pay attention to. Rapt introduces a diverse cast of characters, from researchers to artists to ranchers, to illustrate the art of living the interested life. As their stories show, by focusing on the most positive and productive elements of any situation, you can shape your inner experience and expand your world. By learning to focus, you can improve your concentration, broaden your inner horizons, and most important, feel what it means to be fully alive. (Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, 2009)

Focus: This emphasis is also evident in other arguments with respect to attention focus (Daniel Goleman, Focus: the hidden driver of excellence, 2013; Brian Bruya, Effortless Attention: a new perspective in the cognitive science of attention and action, 2010).

As might be expected, this enthusiasm for attention from a conventional "western" academic and economic perspective is remarkable for the manner in which it excludes the consideration of attention as it has long been fundamental to many disciplines of meditation -- from which it might be assumed that many insights could be elicited. Meditation has even been said to be the science of attention and the manner of its investment (Chiyoko Osborne, Meditation Simplified: why it's the wisest investment in yourself, The Huffington Post, 15 April 2014). For example, with respect to Mindfulness versus Concentration:

Mindfulness picks the objects of attention, and notices when the attention has gone astray. Concentration does the actual work of holding the attention steady on that chosen object. If either of these partners is weak, your meditation goes astray. (Vipassana Meditation)

The concern here is not however to consider such resources. Nor is there any implication that those studying attention should themselves be exemplars of its practice -- as would be the aspiration of those investing in meditation.

The argument which follows emphasizes rather the subjective sense of investing attention, as an extension of familiarity with the financial investment process and the experience of any investor -- but irrespective of conventional economic considerations. The psychology of investing is thereby treated here somewhat as a "meditative discipline" in its own right -- from which insights may be drawn, as framed by the financial language of investing. Provocatively it might be suggested that the language of investment, as employed by the financial community, bears exploration as a functional equivalent to the famed Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola.

Enabling metaphor: This approach may be facilitated by the literature regarding the use of metaphor in relation to financial investment and economics (Magdalena Bielenia-Grajewska, The Role of Metaphors in the Language of Investment Banking, Ibérica, 2009; A. Davidson, How to Understand the Financial Pages: a guide to money and jargon, 2005; A. Espunya and P. Zabalbeascoa, Metaphorical expressions in English and Spanish stockmarket journalistic texts, 2003; D. McCloskey, Metaphors Economists Live By. Social Research, 1995; Arjo Klamer and Donald McCloskey, Accounting as the Master Metaphor of Economics, European Accounting Review, 1992; H. Skorczynska, Metaphor in Scientific Business Journals and Business Periodicals, Ibérica, 2001).

The striking relevance of metaphor to this argument has been most recently made by Mark Forsyth (The Poetic Pageantry of the Financial Mind: in the picturesque patois of bankers, money can seem a mere afterthought, International New York Times, 14 April 2014; The Poetry of the Trading Floor: going beyond bears and bulls, The New York Times, 13 April 2014).

Missing link? Use of metaphor in relation to investment may even be suggestive of a form of cognitive disconnect -- a missing link -- as explored in relation to theories of information by Terrence W. Deacon (What's Missing from Theories of Information? 2010; Incomplete Nature: how mind emerged from matter, 2011).

A fruitful possibility to be explored is the manner in which inattention is exploited through illusion, as is now a focus of the cognitive sciences (G. Kuhn, et al, Towards a Science of Magic, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2009). Arguably illusion -- as semblance -- is partly enabled by a form of visual metaphor. Attentive vigilance to such susceptibility is especially important in a period in which sustaining illusion can be considered the art of finance, advertising and politics -- with the aid of public relations "spin".

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