The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

Let’s assume that you’re out shopping for a new car — one you’ve never heard of before, but now you’re interested since a friend mentioned it and then you end up buying it.

Suddenly, the car is everywhere. It’s parked in front of your house. You see two of them next to you in traffic on your way home from work. The car is even popping up in those ubiquitous commercials, and you swear they came out of nowhere. So what exactly is happening here? Well, turns out it is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, and it all comes down to your brain playing tricks on you.

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is actually a term for ‘frequency illusion’, a type of cognitive bias your mind creates. It is a phenomenon in which people who just learn or notice something start seeing it everywhere.

‘Frequency Illusion’ is a term coined by Arnold Zwicky, a linguist from Stanford University, who claims that it is, in fact, two different processes happening at the same time: selective attention and confirmation bias.

The first process, selective attention, comes about when you learn anything new. Basically, when you learn something new, it stays fresh in your mind – you’re paying more attention to it than other things. Because of this, you see it more often when going about your daily life. However, this very simple, logical process is amped up by confirmation bias, which is a cognitive bias. It  means that your mind is on the look-out for newly learned information because it’s still super fresh and interesting to you. At the same time, your mind sees these new words everywhere, thinks that it’s weird, and tries to make it fit into some rational system. The confirmation bias reassures you that each sighting is further proof of your impression that the thing has gained overnight omnipresence.

So there you have it. You actually see new words more often and believe there’s some weird pattern at work because your mind is trying to make sense of new information. It just so happens that most of it is made up.

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon was invented in 1994 by a commenter on the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ online discussion board, who came up with it after hearing the name of the ultra-left-wing German terrorist group twice in 24 hours. The phrase became a meme on the newspaper’s boards, where it still pops up regularly, and has since spread to the wider Internet.

Got all that? Don’t worry. You’ll hear about it again soon.