注意力分配——基于跨学科视角的理论述评

The Multi-perspective and Inter-disciplinary Study of Attention Allocation

信息爆炸时代,最宝贵的资源是注意力而不是信息。注意力分配一直被作为社会学的附属议题看待,且国内社会学界尚未对此进行系统评述。本文认为,注意力分配并不是一个技术问题(个人技巧或者计划安排),而是一个社会问题,它是组织环境、制度环境和社会环境的产物。基于这一研究立场,本文首先梳理了社会学领域的相关文献,澄清其历史脉络、研究贡献和不足;而后进行跨学科比较和综合,总结注意力分配研究的主要分支领域,关注这些领域之间的关联、延伸和交融;最后,归纳和提炼注意力研究的分析概念、因果机制和解释框架。本文有助于在主要是心理学、经济学和管理学关注的注意力分配问题中引入经济社会学和组织社会学的分析,致力于推进组织决策、权威和激励等主题的研究及其深化。

In the era of information explosion,the scarcest resource is attention,rather than information.Most sociologists,however,treat attention allocation as incidental to other sociological problems.We argue that attention allocation depends on environmental constraints rather than personal techniques.In this article,I firstly survey the historical context,research contribution,and limitation of the sociological research on attention.Secondly,I organize the survey according to the inter-disciplinary fields,and aim to contrast studies across these academic fields to highlight their intellectual connections,bifurcations,and points of departure.I conclude this article by refining the analytic concepts,causal mechanisms,and theoretical framework in the study of attention.I argue that attention allocation is a promising academic field in economic sociology and organizational sociology.It helps promoting the development of theoretical topics,such as decision making,organizational authority,and incentive design.