One point in their defense: sign blindness, which is a combination of change blindness, inattentional blindness, and visual clutter.
The retail environment tends to be full of visual clutter: products, prices, directions, labels, and advertisements. Especially advertisements. Even the products themselves often contain advertisements. Humans can only handle processing a limited amount of information at once, so we cope by not actively focusing on most of it. Otherwise, we’d be like small children in a theme park for the first time, stopping frequently to look at all the details. It becomes a skill and a habit that is automatically applied in similar environments.
I’m guilty of it, and I strive to be an attentive, thoughtful person. Just the other day, I missed the “tap here” taped on the card reader at a convenience store. It was next to two advertisements for energy drinks, a rack of candy and truck stop boner pills also plastered with advertisements, and under all the signs you could imagine for tobacco products. Places like that teach us to tune out signs everywhere else.
One point in their defense: sign blindness, which is a combination of change blindness, inattentional blindness, and visual clutter.
The retail environment tends to be full of visual clutter: products, prices, directions, labels, and advertisements. Especially advertisements. Even the products themselves often contain advertisements. Humans can only handle processing a limited amount of information at once, so we cope by not actively focusing on most of it. Otherwise, we’d be like small children in a theme park for the first time, stopping frequently to look at all the details. It becomes a skill and a habit that is automatically applied in similar environments.
I’m guilty of it, and I strive to be an attentive, thoughtful person. Just the other day, I missed the “tap here” taped on the card reader at a convenience store. It was next to two advertisements for energy drinks, a rack of candy and truck stop boner pills also plastered with advertisements, and under all the signs you could imagine for tobacco products. Places like that teach us to tune out signs everywhere else.
Oh 100%, and the sheer number of people who did this backs that up. I would be more patient now than I was in my late teens, hahaha
Huh. This is also why webpage advertisements suck, and adblock is accessibility.