Philosophy:Baader–Meinhof effect
The Baader–Meinhof effect, also known as frequency illusion, is the illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias[1]).
History
It was named in 1994 after the German Baader–Meinhof Group, when a contributor to the Bulletin Board column in the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported starting to hear the group's name repeatedly after learning about them for the first time. The letter then received hundreds of responses from readers who claimed to have had the same experience.[2][3]
In 2005, Stanford University professor Arnold Zwicky used the term frequency illusion when describing the phenomenon.[1] The terms are now often used interchangeably.
Explanation
The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon occurs because the human brain has a prejudice towards patterns. When the brain detects that an element of information appears more than once, the brain uses the repetitions to form a possible sequence, meanwhile dismissing everything that is not repeating as an irrelevant information.[2]
Arnold Zwicky suggested that the phenomenon is the result of the combined action of two cognitive biases: selective attention and confirmation bias.[4] Selective attention allows consciousness to prioritize information that has the greatest degree of relevance for a particular situation, and discard the rest. The confirmation bias is a tendency to give preference to information that corresponds to a shared point of view, regardless of its truth. A distinctive feature of the phenomenon is that there is no real increase in the frequency of the things that have just come to one's attention. It is an illusion perceived specifically by the person under the influence of the phenomenon.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Zwicky, Arnold (2005-08-07). "Just Between Dr. Language and I". Language Log. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002386.html.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon" (in en-US). https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/.
- ↑ Staff, Pacific Standard. "There's a Name for That: The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon" (in en). https://psmag.com/social-justice/theres-a-name-for-that-the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon-59670.
- ↑ Zwicky, Arnold M. (2006). "Why are we so illuded?" (pdf). https://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/LSA07illude.abst.pdf.
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