THE BAADER-MEINHOF PHENOMENON
ARTICLE #136 –
WRITTEN BY ALAN BELLOWS
You may have heard about Baader-Meinhof
Phenomenon before. In fact, you probably learned about it for the first
time very recently. If not, then you just might hear about it again very soon.
Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of
information—often an unfamiliar word or name—and soon afterwards encounters the
same subject again, often repeatedly. Anytime the phrase “That’s so weird, I
just heard about that the other day” would be appropriate, the utterer is
hip-deep in Baader-Meinhof.
Most people seem to have
experienced the phenomenon at least a few times in their lives, and many people
encounter it with such regularity that they anticipate it upon the introduction
of new information. But what is the underlying cause? Is there some hidden
meaning behind Baader-Meinhof events?
The phenomenon bears some
similarity to synchronicity, which is the experience of having a highly
meaningful coincidence, such as having someone telephone you while you are
thinking about them. Both phenomena invoke a feeling of mild surprise, and
cause one to ponder the odds of such an intersection. Both smack of destiny, as
though the events were supposed to occur in just that arrangement… as
though we’re witnessing yet another domino tip over in a chain of dominoes
beyond our reckoning.
Despite science’s cries that a
world as complex as ours invites frequent coincidences, observation tells us
that such an explanation is inadequate. Observation shows us that Baader-Meinhof
strikes with blurring accuracy, and too frequently to be explained away so
easily. But over the centuries, observation has also shown us that observation
itself is highly flawed, and not to be trusted.
The reason for this is our
brains’ prejudice towards patterns. Our brains are fantastic pattern
recognition engines, a characteristic which is highly useful for learning, but
it does cause the brain to lend excessive importance to unremarkable events.
Considering how many words, names, and ideas a person is exposed to in any
given day, it is unsurprising that we sometimes encounter the same information
again within a short time. When that occasional intersection occurs, the brain
promotes the information because the two instances make up the beginnings of a
sequence. What we fail to notice is the hundreds or thousands of pieces of
information which aren’t repeated, because they do not conform to an
interesting pattern. This tendency to ignore the “uninteresting” data is an
example of selective attention.
In point of fact, coincidences
themselves are usually just an artifact of perception. We humans tend to
underestimate the probability of coinciding events, so our expectations are at
odds with reality. And non-coincidental events do not grab our attention with
anywhere near the same intensity, because coincidences are patterns, and the
brain actually stimulates us for successfully detecting patterns, hence their
inflated value. In short, patterns are habit-forming.
But when we hear a word or name
which we just learned the previous day, it often feels like more than a mere
coincidence. This is because Baader-Meinhof is amplified by the recency
effect, a cognitive bias that inflates the importance of recent stimuli or
observations. This increases the chances of being more aware of the subject
when we encounter it again in the near future.
How the phenomenon came to be
known as “Baader-Meinhof” is uncertain. It seems likely that some individual
learned of the existence of the historic German urban guerrilla group which
went by that name, and then heard the name again soon afterwards. This plucky
wordsmith may then have named the phenomenon after the very subject which
triggered it. But it is certainly a mouthful; a shorter name might have more
hope of penetrating the lexicon.
However it came to be known by
such a name, it is clear that Baader-Meinhof is yet another charming fantasy
whose magic is diluted by stick-in-the-mud science and its sinister cohort:
facts. But if you’ve never heard of the phenomenon before, be sure to watch for
it in the next few days… brain stimulation is nice.
Update: Independent reports
indicate that the name “Baader-Meinhof phenomenon” was coined on a discussion
thread on the St. Paul Pioneer Press in ~1995. Participants were
discussing the sensation, and decrying the lack of a term for it, so someone
asserted naming rights and called it “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon” presumably
based on their own experience hearing that moniker twice in close temporal
proximity.
The more scientifically accepted
name nowadays is “frequency illusion,” but Stanford linguistics professor
Arnold Zwicky didn’t coin that term until 2006, over a decade after
“Baader-Meinhof” was coined, and around the same time this article was
originally written. So both terms are arguably valid.
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