Attentional Bias
The tendency to pay disproportionate attention to certain stimuli — particularly those that are emotionally salient, threatening, or personally relevant — while ignoring others.
Origin
Colin MacLeod, Andrew Mathews, and Pauline Tata published the foundational study in 1986 as "Attentional Bias in Emotional Disorders" in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Working in the United Kingdom, they introduced the dot-probe paradigm — adapted from earlier work by Christos Halkiopoulos — to measure how anxious individuals systematically attend to threatening information. The concept built on selective attention research stretching back to William James in the 1890s and Aaron Beck's cognitive theory of anxiety from the 1970s.
Everyday Use
Once you start thinking about buying a particular car, you suddenly notice that model everywhere on the road. When you're hungry, food advertisements seem to jump out at you. Your brain is constantly filtering what deserves your attention, and whatever is emotionally charged or personally relevant gets priority — which is why anxious people notice threats others miss entirely.