Apophenia – seeing meaningful patterns in unrelated information. Making connections or even seeing patterns is natural to humans; I painted this because I think that clusters of cells sometimes look like galaxies. But if I were to make a comment on how life revolves around certain shapes, then that might be an apophenia.
The word is relatively new: thought to be coined in the 1950’s by a psychiatrist, Klaus Conrad, as he was describing schizophrenia. (While perceiving coincidences and drawing meaning from them is normal, too much of it can be related to paranoia.) Anyway, how the brain interprets information is a big mystery, but there are some ideas on why some people experience coincidences more than others. For example, a report suggests that maybe perceiving more coincidences relate to poorer working memory (a form of short term memory known to only hold about 7 pieces of information, aka someone’s phone number) [1]. The researchers here say that maybe while processing some information, old memories interfere and the person interprets a connection [1]. Regardless, while this mechanism isn’t quite understood, apophenia is also attributed to the Jesus Toast, or the Tortilla Virgin Mary and all the burn marks that resemble faces. Our brains (and eyes) are really good at finding visual patterns. We have a better grasp of this and can manipulate it with optical illusions. Anyway, stay skeptical of your mind’s tricks!
[1] PMID = 31622884
Originally posted on Instagram February 5, 2020
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