Frequency illusion, confirmation bias, and apophenia

A word, an impression

The linguist Arnold Zwicky named the frequency illusion in 2005. It describes the impression that a word, a number, or an animal you have just noticed starts appearing everywhere. There is not necessarily more of it: it is our attention which, once awakened, spots it every time.

Looking for what confirms

Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for what confirms an idea rather than what refutes it. Peter Wason demonstrated it with his “2-4-6” task (1960). When a sign speaks to us, we keep the encounters that fit it and let the others pass, without meaning to.

Seeing connections

Apophenia is the tendency to see connections or patterns. The psychiatrist Klaus Conrad coined the word in 1958. Here it is an ordinary working of the mind, which helps us make sense, and not a disorder: rereading a sign is not the same as being mistaken, it is a very human way of putting order into what we perceive.

What this changes

Knowing all this takes nothing away from what you felt. Your gaze chose what it kept, and that choice says something about you, about what preoccupies you. The journal helps you keep track of what is real: what truly comes back and what mostly came back in your attention.

Facts and sources

• Frequency illusion: named by the linguist Arnold Zwicky (2005). Arnold Zwicky, “Just Between Dr. Language and I,” Language Log, August 7, 2005
• Apophenia: the psychiatrist Klaus Conrad coined the word in 1958 for the tendency to see connections or patterns. Klaus Conrad, Die beginnende Schizophrenie, Stuttgart, 1958, p. 46 (after Merriam-Webster, “apophenia”); to be said without medicalizing the reading of signs
• Confirmation bias: the tendency to look for what confirms an idea rather than what refutes it, demonstrated by Peter Wason (the “2-4-6” task, 1960). P. C. Wason, “On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a conceptual task,” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12 (3), 1960, pp. 129–140