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We sometimes approach a text with a strong expectation about what it will say. This can be hard to shift.
We sometimes approach a text with a strong expectation about what it will say. This can be hard to shift.
In optimistic moments – applying for a job, taking out a car loan, buying tech – we sometimes don’t pay careful attention to what’s being said to us, and substitute what we expect to be said.
We are fixated on the outcome we’ve visualised. So we may not notice warnings, or we may make assumptions about what’s being offered.
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest.
That’s from Paul Simon’s The Boxer.1
Sometimes ignoring them is the only way to resolve deep dissonances in regulated text which, in effect, might say “Invest in our new stock market fund and make your fortune. You could lose all your money.”
So in many cases we apply for things, buy things and sign forms helplessly – perhaps haplessly, but certainly not informedly. When it goes wrong, we might be said to have suffered a cognitive accident.
Information design guidance sometimes refers to ways to emphasise the most ‘important’ information, for example in a heading hierarchy. Sometimes the most important information relates to the reader, not the content.