Presencerather

Presencerather is a term used in discussions of perception and decision making to denote a bias toward cues or information that signify presence, rather than absence. In practice, it describes a tendency to interpret environments, options, or stimuli as more relevant when they show signs of engagement or immediacy, and less relevant when such signs are missing.

It is a neologism, formed by combining presence and rather, and is not widely adopted in formal scholarship. The earliest online usage appears in informal debates about human-computer interaction and social perception in the late 2010s and early 2020s, but it lacks consensus on definition or measurement.

Scholars who reference presencerather often use it to explain why users respond to visible activity indicators, such as live chats or status icons, even when these indicators may give an incomplete picture. Critics argue that the term overlaps with established ideas like the availability heuristic or the bias toward certain information and that it risks conflating presence with meaningful relevance.

Related concepts include presence, social presence, and the availability heuristic.