Frequency illusion, in full
Two ordinary processes do the work. Selective attention makes a newly learned word, car model or number stand out from a stream you were already filtering, so it now reaches you at all. Confirmation bias then keeps score badly, logging each appearance as evidence of a pattern and quietly dropping the hours in which nothing appeared. The underlying rate has not moved. Your detection rate and your memory have.
The nickname Baader-Meinhof phenomenon comes from a 1994 letter to the St. Paul Pioneer Press by a reader named Terry Mullen, who had run into the German militant group's name twice in quick succession after years of never hearing it. Other readers wrote in with their own versions and the label stuck to the newspaper's discussion column. The Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky introduced the more descriptive term frequency illusion in 2005, and the Oxford English Dictionary took the phrase in March 2019.
A clock reaches 11:11 twice a day whether or not anyone is watching. Once the sequence has been given meaning, the glance that lands on it registers and the glance that lands on 11:09 does not. The same asymmetry sits behind a birth date that seems to keep appearing on number plates. Our guide on seeing the same numbers everywhere works through what that does and does not settle.
- Pattern-seeing
- Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, Baader-Meinhof effect
A worked example
Someone decides on a Monday that 333 is significant. Over the following week they spot it on a receipt, on a bus and on an order number, three sightings, and conclude it is following them. They also read hundreds of other numbers that week without a single one registering. Nothing was counted before Monday, and the non-sightings are never counted at all, so the tally can only move upward.
Sources
Arnold Zwicky coined the term frequency illusion in a 2005 Language Log post, the Oxford English Dictionary added it in March 2019 defining it as a quirk of perception whereby a newly noticed phenomenon suddenly seems ubiquitous, and the Baader-Meinhof nickname traces to a 1994 St. Paul Pioneer Press letter later identified as the work of reader Terry Mullen.
Language Log — "Frequency illusion" in the OED
See also
Where it comes up on this site
Frequency illusion: frequently asked
A reader called Terry Mullen wrote to the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1994 describing how he had run into the German militant group's name twice in quick succession after years of never hearing it. Other readers sent in their own versions, the paper's column adopted the label, and it stuck. Nothing about the militants explains the effect. The name records where the anecdote was printed, not what causes it.
Yes. Arnold Zwicky named it in 2005 and the Oxford English Dictionary added an entry in March 2019.
It explains the everywhere part. A clock reaches 11:11 on a fixed schedule, and your attention now flags that reading while 11:09 goes past unrecorded. Whether the moment means anything to you is a different question.