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has this ever happened to you one day you discover something new a new word for example
or a new brand of model or car then suddenly you start seeing this new discovery everywhere
you go that new word crops up again and again in your newsfeed that band's music
starts playing all the time on the radio and that model of car appears on every street corner if so
relax the universe is not conspiring to tell you something nor are you going crazy you're simply
falling victim to the bida meinhof effect a curious but extremely common psychological
phenomenon that reveals much about how our brains process information the barna minor effect is also
known as the frequency illusion a term coined by stanford university linguist arnold's wiki
in a 2006 article titled why are we so eluded in the articles wiki lists the frequency illusion as
one of five major cognitive biases to which the human brain is particularly vulnerable the other
four being the recency illusion the belief that if you only noticed something recently then it must
have originated recently the antiquity illusion the belief that if a practice is common for you
then people in general must have done it for a long time the out-group illusion the attribution
of novel non-standard or undesirable practices to groups you do not belong to and the in-group
illusion the attribution of common or desirable practices to groups that you do belong to
according to zwiki the frequency illusion results from the combination of the recency illusion
and three other psychological effects selective attention selection bias and confirmation bias
when we first learn a new word for example due to the recency illusion we assume that this
word is also new to everyone else even though this is unlikely to be the case
as a result our interest in this novel piece of information is peaked and for a while it remains
at the forefront of our minds priming us to more readily recognize that word when it next crops up
however due to selection bias we're less likely to notice the appearance of more common and familiar
words even though they might occur at a much higher frequency than the word we've just learned
finally thanks to confirmation bias we're more likely to recall appearances of the new word
as this serves to confirm our innate belief that it is indeed appearing more frequently
thus the word itself is not actually appearing more frequently we're just more likely to notice
and remember it when it does appear though the frequency illusion is usually associated
with anecdotal examples similar phenomena have been observed in laboratory settings for example
nina ridge professor of cognitive science at macri university sydney describes an experiment in which
subjects are presented with a collage of different images and asked to pick out all instances of
a particular image say a cat if the subjects are made to first memorize another word say piano then
the speed with which they're able to pick out cats is significantly reduced as their minds
become distracted by images of pianos within the collage in other words the recency illusion tricks
our brains into noticing pianos above all other images according to rich these illusions stem
from the way in which the brains of early humans evolved to process the world around them while
selective attention may have its disadvantages the ability to tune out irrelevant information
is absolutely vital to our survival for without it we would quickly become overwhelmed by an
overabundance of stimuli similarly the human brain is extremely good at recognizing patterns a useful
skill for tracking the migration of prey animals or avoiding dangerous weather patterns and other
natural hazards but this ability can also backfire causing us to see patterns where non-exist indeed
the human brain is inherently ill-equipped to deal with real-life randomness and probability
and when presented with dissonant or confusing information it will try its utmost to fit that
information into some kind of rational meaningful framework whether or not one actually exists
a fact which the entire gambling industry is built upon in the case of the frequency illusion
the combination of the recency illusion selective attention and confirmation bias causes us to pick
out instances of recently learned information above everything else while our propensity for
pattern-seeking and rationalization causes us to interpret this information as evidence of an
actual physical phenomenon rather than merely a cognitive illusion another factor at play
here is our innate tendency to assume that our individual experience is somehow special and
unique and not representative of the average person this is the bias behind the recency
illusion convincing us that we are the first to discover a new word or other piece of information
when in reality a large number of people likely already knew about it while the frequency illusion
is largely a harmless phenomenon the bias underpinning it can have serious real world
consequences for example investors in new technology or financial instruments like
cryptocurrency often assume that they are among the first to discover these new trends and will
therefore reap the benefits of early adoption in reality however these investors are highly
unlikely to be among the earliest adopters as the average person is only likely to learn of a
new phenomenon some time after its introduction for this reason researchers working in cognitive
and behavioral science and other fields are careful to follow the copernican mediocrity
principle named after nicolas copernicus the 16th century astronomer who popularized the
notion that the earth revolved around the sun and was not the center of the universe
this principle holds that the experience of any given person is not particularly special
or privileged and is roughly representative of the global average this seemingly simple principle can
be surprisingly powerful for example in 1969 princeton astrophysicist j richard gott used
the copernican principle to predict the fall of the berlin wall with eerie accuracy assuming that
every person's birth occurs at random and that his visits to berlin had no special significance got
reasoned that there was a 75 probability that he was seeing the wall after the first quarter
of its lifespan based on the fact that the wall was already eight years old got calculated with
50 confidence that the war would no longer be standing 24 years later in 1993. as it
happened the wall was torn down in 1989. god later applied the same reasoning to humanity in order to
calculate how long the species as a whole would survive again assuming that every person's birth
is random chances are that any given human will be born roughly in the middle of human history which
by 1993 had seen the birth of an estimated 1.14 trillion humans assuming that the world population
would stabilize around 10 billion due to limits on natural resources and that average life expectancy
would hover around 80 years got calculated that the remaining 1.14 trillion humans would be born
over 9120 years placing the extinction of the species in the year 11 113. this calculation
has since become known as the doomsday argument so coming back to the frequency illusion while
most instances over the phenomenon are as we've seen earlier cognitive illusion it is sometimes
possible for a certain word or idea to suddenly increase in prevalence within the collective
consciousness this is particularly common in the age of social media when trends can and do explode
overnight and certain words and ideas can suddenly appear everywhere at once certain researchers also
cite the simultaneous intervention phenomenon as a possible cause for certain instances of the
frequency illusion historians have long noted that throughout history many major scientific
discoveries or technical innovations were made independently by several different people at
once for example sir isaac newton gottfried leibniz coming up with calculus in the 1670s or
carl shiel joseph priestley antoine lavoisier and others discovering the element oxygen in the 1770s
while in many cases this may just be coincidence one theory holds that certain vital conditions
whether social intellectual or technological must be in place for any discovery or
innovation to occur thus if these conditions are met in multiple locations then similar discoveries
and innovations will likely occur simultaneously similarly a particular combination of social and
cultural factors may result in a large number of people suddenly using a certain word or discussing
a certain idea so it is possible that you are in fact seeing a certain word more frequently
but it's more than likely that it's all in your head at this point you might be wondering why is
the frequency illusion commonly known as the baida meinhof effect bizarrely unlike most
psychological phenomena like the dunning-kruger effect the beidermeinhof phenomenon is not named
after its discoverers but rather of all things a german terrorist organization also known as the
red army faction or raf the baidu meinhof gang was a far left-wing paramilitary group founded
in west germany in 1970 by andreas barda ulrich meinhof gudrun enslin and horst mahler born of
the west german student protest movement of the late 1960s the raf rebelled against what it saw
as dangerous conservatism and traditionalism in west german politics and the failure of the german
government to adequately confront its nazi past for more than a decade the group carried out a
string of bombings kidnappings and assassinations climaxing with the 1977 abduction and murder
of hans martin schleier a former ss officer and president of several powerful industrial
associations so how did a west german terrorist group come to provide the most popular name
for the frequency illusion the connection is thought to have originated in an online discussion
board for the minnesota newspaper the saint paul pioneer press in 1995. on that board a reader
named terry mullin recounted an incident in which he and a friend were discussing the bydermine half
gang only for the group to appear in a newspaper article the very next day decades after it had
any reason to be in the news lacking a better name for the phenomenon mullen dubbed it to the
barda meinhof effect and the name stuck but while this mouthful of a name might not be very
catchy don't worry even if you can't remember it now chances are you'll be hearing it again
and again very soon so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did please do
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