As you enter your Grandma Thorndike's house you ears being to hurt as you notice she is once again playing her favorite "Contry Music" album. You soon get caught up in the christmas festivities...talking with family..eating...and playing psychological trivia. The doorbell rings and you cousing John walks in. He whispers in you ear, "Hey, what's up with this music, is grandma trying to kill us with ear poison? Giving John a blank stare, you say, "What do you mean?". Explain the psychological phenomenon that has just occured here. Why are you no longer hearing the music?
Search under habituation.
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The psychological phenomenon that has just occurred here is called "selective attention" or "the cocktail party effect". Selective attention refers to the ability of our brain to focus on a specific stimulus or sensory input while filtering out other competing stimuli.
In this scenario, when your cousin John whispered in your ear about the music, your attention shifted from the music to the conversation with John. This shift in attention caused your brain to prioritize the conversation with John over the music, resulting in the music becoming less prominent in your perception.
The cocktail party effect is a specific example of selective attention, where you are able to focus on a specific conversation or voice in a noisy environment while ignoring other conversations or background noise. It is as if your brain automatically tunes in to the relevant information while tuning out the irrelevant or less important stimuli.
In this case, your brain prioritized the conversation with John and focused your auditory perception on his voice, causing you to no longer actively hear or pay attention to the music. This phenomenon highlights the selective nature of our attention and how our brain filters out information to focus on what is most relevant or salient at any given moment.