When people explain why something happened, they usually point to what was most prominent in their awareness.
Make a factor focal and it starts to look causal. A small change in salience—a word, an image, a number, a question—can shift what someone blames, credits, fears, or trusts, even when the underlying facts haven’t moved.
This is why ‘framing’ works: you don’t need to alter reality to alter interpretation. Once interpretation shifts, preferences shift, because people choose based on the story they believe they’re in.
The practical implication is blunt: if you let the other side decide what’s salient, you let them decide what counts as the reason. Choose the focal point first, and the reasons begin arranging themselves around it.