Editing Vested interest (communication theory) (section)

===Salience===
[[social salience|Salience]] refers to the perceiver's awareness of the effects of an attitude upon himself.<ref name="Crano"/> In other words, the prominence of an issue, as perceived by an individual, shapes the strength of his resulting attitude. Salient attitudes have a greater effect directly on subsequent behavior. Linking this discovery to vested interest, the research concluded that the salience effect was heightened when the attitude had important personal outcomes for someone. When the consequences of the behavior issuing from an attitude are highly salient, attitude-behavior consistency increases. If consequences are not salient, the consistency of the effects of vested interest on attitude behavior will be dramatically reduced. For instance, two people may have negative attitudes towards living near a prison. The first person lost a loved one at the hands of an inmate who escaped during a jailbreak. The second person simply does not like the eyesore the prison building creates in the area around his home. The first person's attitude towards inmates and prisons will probably be more salient than that of the second person who has not experienced a similar trauma. The first person's more salient attitude will foster the operation of vested interest, which will result in greater attitude-behavior consistency.

Attitudes that have been acquired through direct experience, such as the example just given, may be more salient than those acquired through vicarious processes. This greater salience results in greater consistency in attitude behavior. The attitude of someone who is non-salient reduces vested interest and weakens attitude-behavior consistency. The most powerful impression to emerge from all the analyses is the overwhelming effect of stake, or personal consequence, on attitude and behavior. When stake is high, people assume that a person would find the critical issue highly salient. Stake does not interact with, but enhances the perception of, issue salience. This is an important effect, because salience significantly affects actions that are expected to happen.

Additionally, salience can be described as the most recent and accessible memory associated with a specific object (i.e. idea) in which an individual has developed their own unique attitude.<ref name="Bradley & Miller">{{cite journal |last1=Bradley |first1=A. |last2=Miller |first2=C. |title=Vested Interest: Developing Scales for Assessing Flooding Preparedness |journal=Disaster Prevention and Management |date=2016 |volume=25 |issue=3 |pages=283–285 |issn=0965-3562}}</ref>  Mortality, for instance, would become salient when faced with a situation where death was probable or the known death of a friend, relative or an experienced event which resulting in someone's death.  This death salience would then influence behavior for a short amount of time following the event.<ref name="Pashak et al.">{{cite journal |last1=Pashak |first1=T. |last2=Oswald |first2=S.R. |last3=Justice |first3=M.D. |last4=Seely |first4=L.T. |last5=Burns |first5=B.R. |last6=Sheperd |first6=S. |title=You are Alive Right Now: An Experimental Exploration of The Interplay Between Existential Salience, Mental Health, and Death Anxiety |journal=College Student Journal |date=2017 |volume=51 |issue=4 |pages=452–453 |issn=0146-3934}}</ref>