Attention Grabber 2: Unexpected Elements
,The second aspect that immediately commands attention is contrast. The neuroscience term for this is salience, and it means how much something stands out in contrast to its surroundings. You would immediately notice a little green light flashing on your cell phone indicating a new message. Imagine that you are driving in the country and out the window you see cornfield after cornfield. Suddenly you notice a patch of sunflowers amid the corn. You cannot help but focus your attention on those bright sunflowers. The flashing light and the sunflowers are salient stimuli.
The reason that something unexpected stands out has to do with the scientific principle of habituation. Habituation means that we get used to something over time. For instance, if you enter a restaurant you may notice a strong smell. After you’re in the restaurant for a couple of minutes, you don’t notice it anymore; you’ve habituated to the smell. Habituation can happen with anything—smells, visual stimuli, emotions, sounds, temperature, and so on.
How can you use contrast to help yourself stand out? As we just discussed, visual elements are often the most important in attracting attention, so you can vary different aspects of visual design. One study by professors in Italy showed that varying color, form, and luminance (or brightness) is effective at capturing attention. For example, you may choose to use neutral colors in the background of your Web site or business card and bright colors in your logo or clothing to stand out. You can vary form by using contrasting fonts. You can manipulate luminance by using a strong light source in the headshot that you use in social media and making sure that the image is bright overall.
Also consider what naturally stands out about you and capitalize on those characteristics. If you tend to have a mellow, soothing voice and persona, when you go to frenzied networking meetings where people rush around trying to meet one another, emphasize the calm confidence in your voice and presence when you initiate conversations. If everyone goes up to each other with an opening line like, “So, what do you do?” begin conversations with something different, such as an observation, compliment, joke (but only if you’re comfortable with humor—that one can backfire), or question.
Remember, however, that as we discussed in Chapter 1, we tend to like those who are similar to ourselves, so you want to be sure the contrast isn’t so extreme that people feel you are too different and cannot relate with you. Using the example above, if someone is high energy and you are so mellow that they wonder if you have a pulse, that isn’t good. Or if you attend a group where most people wear gray suits and white shirts, you don’t necessarily need to wear a bright blue velvet suit, but you may wear a blue shirt with a navy suit. It doesn’t take a lot to stand out and be recognized as different.