So once upon a time there was a man named John and John had always been fascinated by patterns and connections,
And he started to believe he saw them everywhere. He looked he was convinced that they held a deeper meaning, He would spend hours pouring over books He was trying to uncover hidden messages and in the text of books and novels or he would stare at the stars He was trying to decipher some cosmic code now over time John's obsession with patterns began to spiral a little bit out of control
he started thinking he was seeing connections where there were none, and he started to attribute very deep significance to completely random and sporadic events. He would sometimes read the same books over and over, convinced that every time he found some new hidden meaning. And he would stare at the stars, sometimes for hours, convinced that he had found some pattern that nobody else could see.
Now, John's friends and family started to talk to him about what they felt was his unhealthy obsession, but he refused to listen. He knew that he was on to something, that he was perhaps pretty special. And everybody else must just be blind to the truth. So he became increasingly isolated. He started to be withdrawn, spending all of his time chasing after patterns and connections. But then finally, one day, John felt like he had this breakthrough.
He was staring at a tree outside of a window and he noticed a pattern in the way that the leaves appear to be arranged. Now he was convinced that this pattern actually held the key to some great mystery and he spent just day after day writing about it, journaling about it, and trying to decipher it, going back to this tree and looking for even more of these patterns.
And he even started thinking that he was seeing the patterns in not just trees, but in bark, in the cloud formations, and even some of the food that he ate. At one point he finally just had this realization that he kind of felt like he'd been chasing this. Dream or these thoughts all around all day and the patterns turned out to be nothing more than
a coincidence. That there really wasn't a deeper meaning to be found. Now at that moment, John had a realization that he'd been so caught up in his own obsession with patterns, that he actually lost sight of the beauty and wonder of the world around him. The friends, the relationship, the opportunities that he had in front of him. He realized that sometimes the most meaningful moments in his life were the ones that could not be explained or
reduced to just some simple pattern. From that day forward, he resolved it was his time to live in the moment and to appreciate the world for what it was, patterns or no patterns. He recognized that he was trying to make sense out of things that sometimes didn't necessarily need to make much sense. They just kind of were. And so John started to be and become and started to enjoy and connect more with friends and family. Now, what are we talking about today? We're talking about
a fascinating phenomenon called apophenia. That it's there for a reason, our desire, our need to find patterns or to make meaning in most every single thing that we do or see. But sometimes trying to make meaning of things will take us out of that very moment and we'll find ourselves missing out on opportunities for connection, connection to others, connection to the universe, to nature, to your version of God, of deity, of all the wonderful things that are in your life.
We're going to talk about this concept of apothenia today, that and so much more coming up on today's episode of the virtual couch. Music. Hey everybody, welcome to episode 376 of The Virtual Couch. I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and host of Waking Up to Narcissism and now, Murder on the Couch, as well as a couple of other podcasts, one that is coming out soon
as well. It's the He's a Porn Addict Now What? I always want to say the musical, but it's going to be the podcast where co-author Josh Shea and I have read over the questions that are in the book and we're adding a little bit more because the book is now, I think, or three years old. But today I want to get right at it. I am going to talk about a phenomenon
called apophenia. And I'm excited about today's episode because literally of something that happened this morning and I just want to go off of my train of thought to riff in a sense. And I think it's going to set the stage for what this concept of apophenia is. So let's, go on my train of thought today, the day that I'm recording this episode, it won't be the the day that it will be released. But today is my wife's birthday.
Happy birthday, Wendy. And this morning I woke up and my plan had been to do a little bit of decorating of the house because Wendy has done a phenomenal job. We put streamers up in the doorways and we have a happy birthday sign that goes from arch to arch in the dining room, or I guess it's between the family room and the kitchen. And you tape it up and you tape the streamers and the kids have woken up all the time
to seeing the house decorated. So I get up early and I cannot find the decorations and I look and I look and I can't find them. And so then I end up heading out to work a little bit late. Now if you want to talk about late, it's actually still really early. It was around 4 or 4.15 in the morning because I like to come to the office really early and record, record and write whenever I can. It's very quiet in the office. So I get on my vehicle. My vehicle currently is called a Can-Am Riker.
It's basically a tricycle of a motorcycle. If you want to look one up, maybe I'll put the link in the show notes because I love this thing, but it's something that I think would probably not be the first thing that you would imagine that I am driving.
And as a matter of fact, a few years ago on one of my four pillars of a connected conversation episodes, I joked about being on a walk and seeing one of these and saying to my wife while we were on the walk, explaining the four pillars to her, that my pillar two is that you can't tell somebody that you think that they're wrong or something that you disagree with them, even if you do think that they're wrong or you disagree because that's going to shut the conversation down.
And we saw one of these drive by and I said, for example, I really like one of those. And she said, oh, and I said, I think I would like to have one one day. And she's like, oh, no, you'll never be having one of those. And I said, oh, you broke pillar two. And she jokingly said, I don't care. I don't like those. And again, we were having a funny conversation around that.
But I have this Can-Am Riker. Now, why do I have the Can-Am Riker? Well, it's because we've gone through a few cars in our family and just in helping provide people with transportation. Then this made the most sense at the time when I bought it because of a thing called COVID, which made the used car market skyrocket. So instead of getting a Can-Am tricycle, basically, you could have gotten an incredibly old and unreliable used car. Now, I am already digressing.
So let me take you back to this morning. So I get out late and I still need to get gas. I forgot that I needed gas. Now, why did I need gas? Because Friday when I was driving home, I had an opportunity to stop and get gas. But at that point, I just wanted to get home. I really didn't have any pressing time issues, but it had been quite a long week. And I thought, I just want to get home. I'll get gas later. I thought I would probably get gas on Saturday.
And instead, I didn't. So I'm almost out of gas. So I need to stop and get gas to the point where I need to stop it. At a grocery store or at a convenience store that I don't normally stop at that's a little closer to my home. So I stop there, I'm on the Can-Am Riker, I stop to get gas, and then I decide I wanna go in and get, sometimes they have a breakfast burrito that I enjoy. So I haven't been to this place in a long time, so I think I'm gonna go in.
And being pretty lazy, I leave my motorcycle helmet on. I walk in there, I get the breakfast burrito, and as I go up to the counter, the lady says, hey, the last time that you were here, the cops came looking for you. I've never walked into a convenience store at 4.30 in the morning with my motorcycle helmet on and heard somebody say, the last time you were here, the cops were looking for you.
And so I said, oh, I, I don't know if I've really ever been here before in the morning, especially with my motorcycle helmet on. And she said, okay, because it was somebody that rode a bike like yours. And then I even thought, did she see my tricycle pull into the parking lot? Because I don't think I've ever seen a tricycle pull into a parking lot. And then I even thought, did she see my tricycle pull into the parking lot?
Because I don't think I've ever been confused as being some motorcycle riders, a matter of fact, I don't even get the, the convenience courtesy wave by other motorcycle riders. When you pass by them on the freeway, which I thought I might get. Being on this, uh, Can-Am Riker, but apparently the three wheels doesn't give you the credibility to get the wave from fellow motorcycle riders.
But she said, okay, well, I think it really was you, or at least it looked like you, but then again, you've got your helmet on. So I was a little bit rattled and I walked out of the convenience store thinking, okay, that just feels really odd. I just feel like something is really strange. So then as I'm putting my burrito away and I am starting to fire up the can-am, a guy, runs out and he says, hey, did you drop your credit card?
And I was pretty sure I didn't. I had just had one card in my back pocket because of riding a motorcycle. And so then I reach and I have it, matter of fact, I just felt that it's still in my back right pocket right now. So I said, Oh no, I'm okay, thanks. And he said, I'm pretty sure this was yours. And I just said, no, I'm pretty sure it wasn't. I've got mine, but thank you. And part of me now, even now thinks I probably should have at least went and saw it, but I just got rattled.
And all of a sudden I think, wait, is this a sting to take down the guy that was here before that looked like me? And I promise you now, I look over to my right and the local police drive by. And now we're at 4.30 in the morning, the last time a guy was on apparently a trike like mine and had stopped by this place that the cops had come asking about him. So all of a sudden, I'm a little bit panicked. I'm a little bit paranoid and I just think, this is crazy.
Now, the craziest part is that had I been able to find these decorations, I probably wouldn't have left at the time I did. And had I gotten the gas last Friday, then there would have been no reason for me to to get gas on a Monday morning, and even further so, had we not had maybe this little pandemic that had happened, then I might've actually gotten a different car rather than buying this tricycle. Now, that's a lot of what-ifs and it could have been. But today we're going to talk a little bit
about patterns. And we're going to talk about seeing patterns in the universe, seeing patterns in behavior, seeing patterns in things that just happen to us. And I don't want to say that I am challenging the concept of that things happen for a reason, because I do believe that a lot of people live by that creed. And I know that at one point that was something that I absolutely did.
And there is still a version of that that I can hang on to, that if things happen for a reason, that even the reason why all these things happen is maybe that was an opportunity for me to self confront. And as a matter of fact, I hesitated, do I tell this part or not? But one of the things that's pretty unique about buying a Can-Am, it has two wheels in the front and one in the back,
is that I was told by the Can-Am dealer that then that makes it, in essence, a car. So you you don't have to get a motorcycle license. And so then when I went to get insurance for it, they said, I think that you need a motorcycle license in order to get the insurance, but then it turns out that I didn't have to get that. The reason I say I even hesitate on that is because now that I understand more about the way memory works, there's a part of me that feels like, is that exactly what I heard?
Because I hope it is, or else I'm gonna have to go get a motorcycle license.
But so even as I was looking at these things happening for a reason this morning, as I was driving to work, there was a part of me that thought, Okay, I can make that argument that let's just say then that all of these things happened so that then I did get that little scare from the police because if the police would have pulled me over because they thought that I was this random guy who they were looking after last time that rode a bike like mine,
well then maybe that did happen for a reason, the reason that I need to go look up and see if I really do need a motorcycle license. So it took all of those events to happen in order for me to say, okay, I need to self-confront on is that something that I really need to go take care of because if not, then there could be another situation down the road where I am pulled over and all of a sudden they say, you know you need a motorcycle license, right?
To then I would have thought, Man, I should've went and got that. Or found out if I needed one or not on the day that I got confronted about being a potential convict when I wanted my breakfast burrito after not getting gas on a Friday and getting it on a Monday instead. So I hope you can see why I was so excited to even just go on this random train of thought today. And we're going to dig more into the concepts of apophenia
now. But I know that people in my office often say that they feel like everything in their life does happen for a reason. And I think that that argument can definitely be made. And even if that reason is for an opportunity to self-confront and take ownership or accountability, maybe what am I pretending not to know?
But I know that after having gone through some pretty difficult things in our family, and as a matter of fact, I know that many of you have been following the plight of my daughter, Alex, who the irony is I'm smiling and laughing now, and she's the one that edits the podcast. So she will be the one that is now seeing where I'm going as I talk through this.
But when we talked in one of the, I think the first episode where Wendy, Alex, Mitch and I were all on the episode together, and we talked about that one of the most difficult things I think are the people that do come up and bless their heart. They mean well, but they would say things like, Hey, at least, at least, at least she's alive, which again, we're so grateful that she is. I can't even, I could not even tell you enough how grateful I am.
But sometimes that saying, Hey, at least is a way that that person gets rid of their discomfort Because they may feel uncomfortable and not know what to say other than, I am so sorry, and that stinks, and what happened, and how are you doing? So then the way that we get rid of our discomfort at times is to say, well, at least, at least she's alive. But there's a cousin to at least, which is the everything happens for a reason.
And I think this is one of those situations where it was a little bit difficult at that time to hear some of those versions of the story.
So sometimes I would find myself almost thinking through this lengthy train of thought that I that I think I was doing just for my own benefit where I would say at times okay I I don't want to think that the person that ran the red light that saw Alex or that hit Alex that caused all the things that happened from there that I I don't want to think that okay this person for some reason I don't even know and I'm making all this up but I think this is why we sometimes,
look for patterns or want to say everything happens for a reason because. I I feel like in that scenario my mind would sometimes say okay I can imagine Imagine someone saying to me something like, you know, that person was probably looking at their phone as they ran the red light and maybe they were looking at their phone because they were struggling with some addiction or whatever that was.
And so had they not been doing that, then they wouldn't have been looking at their phone, then they wouldn't have ran the red light and all of these things that then wanting to then say, so, you know, there's a reason why. And I had a hard time even trying to wrap my head around if that was the way that things worked because I don't, I don't believe that that's how it worked. I believe that often things happen and then we try to make sense of them.
So, there's this universal concept around agency that then things just happen. We have an opportunity to make choices and then things happen. And sometimes I like to joke about even the concept around something like biological agency where if two people get together that both are 5'6 or 5'7, then genetically that genetic agency says that their offspring are not going to be very tall. But then if two people that are giant people get together, then they're more likely to
have very tall offspring. So I feel like often we can go with that everything happens for a reason, but then there's also the concepts of just things that happen because of natural laws, for example. And then even then, I wonder if we're just trying to make sense of things, sometimes that just don't make sense. And that there are times where things just happen,
and then now what do we do with those things? And I think that even if we're talking about things in a spiritual realm, where sometimes I think when people want to say that, I hear often in my office where people will say things like, well, God must have had a plan. And then when somebody's really gone through something that's been really tragic or horrific,
it can be really difficult for them to think, okay, that's the plan. But then often they can find maybe more comfort in that happened and now God or Creator or being of comfort is with them and will always be with them and is maybe the only one who really understands
the depth of that pain or sorrow that that person's going through. And maybe this is truly a topic for another day, but often we have a difficulty if we feel like there isn't this exact order or a reason for everything happening in the universe, because there is an absolute belief that what if that means that sometimes just random things happen, because that might not mean that we are as special or unique as we believe that we are.
And so often we spend so much time trying to prove to ourselves or others that we are different and special and magical, and that there is more meaning. And often when we're so focused on trying to make sure that we are special or find this intense or very deep meaning in a moment or a situation, we take ourselves right out of that situation. And we miss this opportunity just to simply be in the moment and to be present.
And we miss these opportunities to have connections with each other or even with nature because, we're so busy trying to figure out why. the why or the what or what happens next. So I know I'm in a lot of different places right now, but it's going to get to this concept of apophenia because it's an episode that I've wanted to do for quite a while.
But then I just found myself looking at that this morning and thinking it really is interesting that, either I just forgot to look for the decorations last night, which I didn't even really forget. I just thought I knew where they were. And then I woke up today and I wasn't able to find them. So then I needed to get to work and I forgot to get gas last week. And again, It wasn't even that I necessarily forgot to, but I decided not to.
And I thought, how far can you even go back when you try to make sense of things? Because I went to this doctor's appointment on a Friday, last Friday. I don't think I even mentioned that. I went to a doctor's appointment on Friday, which took extra gas, which that was the reason why I was driving back where I needed gas. And I went to that doctor's appointment on Friday because I think I'd already canceled it one other time. Why did I cancel it?
Because I'm not always the biggest fan of going to doctors. So why is that? Do I then go all the way back to my childhood and, you know, did my parents, did we go to the doctor often? Did we not go to the doctor? Are there people in my life that have bad situations or things that have happened at doctor's offices?
So sometimes that's where I want to say it's really hard to make sense of all of the different things that go into one's decision and sometimes just saying, okay, that happened and now what do I do with it can be very powerful. So the article that I'm going to refer to today to talk more about apophenia is one from psychcentral.com, and it's by a psychologist named, or actually medically reviewed by Kendra Kubala, who's a clinical psychologist. And the article was written by Kathy Lovering,
and this is back from December of 2021. But she's talking about all about apophenia. So apophenia or patternicity is characterized by seeing patterns and unrelated things. And she said, anybody can experience this, but if you live with schizophrenia, it may be a part of
a delusion. And I'm not going to spend as much time talking about the delusional part or the schizophrenic part of apothenia, but I think that just the concept of seeing patterns and looking for meaning in patterns is maybe more of what I want to talk about today, just because I think it's fascinating. I really do. So she says apothenia or seeing a pattern,
where one doesn't actually exist is not uncommon. You may have looked up at the sky and seen a cloud that looked like a puppy or a sailboat, or you may sometimes see faces in inanimate objects like a tree or a fire hydrant. She said professionals aren't immune to apophenia either. Scientists may draw conclusions from patterns and data that aren't really there. Medical professionals may make incorrect diagnoses based on apophenia or seeing patterns of behavior.
So it might go ahead and cue up their brains to say, okay, if I've seen this pattern, then I can make this assumption, that this next thing must be true. So she said for most people, apophenia is a common occurrence that doesn't require any treatment. Again, that's what we're going to talk about today. But if people have schizophrenia, then apophenia can be part of a delusion, and it can be part of them trying to absolutely make sense of things that just aren't making sense in their head.
She said if apophenia is disrupting your day-to-day life, there's hope, there's treatment options, and people that do have the schizophrenic version of apophenia can find help to manage symptoms. But let's talk more about just that desire we have to make sense of things, sometimes that don't make sense or are looking for patterns. So apophenia then means that we see these patterns and random events. She said it also applies when people deduce meaning from numbers or images,
shapes, or any other objects that do appear to be truly random. She said this phenomenon is extremely common because we routinely look for patterns and we're predisposed for finding patterns even when there are none. I think what's interesting is that I want to make sure that I am am not, I'm not inferring that people don't see numbers or patterns or patterns and things. And then that I'm trying to say that, well, those don't mean anything because who am I to question somebody else's experience?
As a matter of fact, there are certain patterns of even things like numbers that I know that I see in my life that I have assigned some pretty significant meaning to. I mean, I feel like if there's anything I want to be as absolutely authentic and honest about even as I cover this topic, because again, it's just a topic I'm fascinated by. But there are absolutely things that I see in my life where I do say, okay, I see this pattern of numbers very often.
And then there's a part of me that does wonder, is that just because I'm looking for them or is it because there's some significance to seeing this pattern of numbers? And at this point, I feel like there's some significance because I don't seem to notice that I am looking for this particular pattern. She says, though, that if we look at causes of apophenia, there are no known causes of apophenia, but here's why I really like this concept.
It has its roots in human biology, where creating linkages between events actually helped us for survival. In his book, The Believing Brain, author Michael Shermer gives the example of an early hominid who hears a rustle in the grass. So now they have a choice then to connect that sound with a predator and to react or to assume that it's nothing. So you see the rustle in the grass and you are early, you're on the plains and your only
goal was survival. Your brain is truly a don't get killed device and you see a rustling in the grass. So it would only make sense then to put the pattern together that if I see rustling the grass that I can anticipate a predator so that I can be on guard.
So again, she says they have a choice then to make that sound, or actually this is Michael Shermer in his book, The Believing Brain, that if they hear the rustle in the grass, they have a choice to connect that sound with a predator and to react or to assume that it's nothing. Making the connection supports survival as the hominid gets out of the way of a potential
threat. And then apophenia can also be the result of training. Some scientists and medical professionals like pathologists and nurses start to connect facts and data to make diagnoses. But sometimes this skill can turn into a bias where people see patterns that aren't there. And I know even in the world that I work in as a therapist, that I remember my sensei, Darlene Davis, who I had on early in my podcast, I need to get her back on.
But I remember her saying very early on in grad school that you will hit a point as a therapist where you probably have seen everything a few times and you'll start to want to just, you are going to want to just tell somebody, hey, can we just skip the steps and here's what you need to do. But she said, by that time, you'll understand that that really isn't the way that it works.
And I fully believe that that is the case because when I get people in, let's say that there's somebody struggling with turning to an unhealthy coping mechanism and they're still, they walk in my office, their heads hung down and they're just beating themselves up. And it just breaks my heart because I just want to say, oh man, we've got a lot of work to do to get over this shame.
We got to get the shame out of the here first so that we can start helping this person become a better version of themselves that then will not want to turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms. So that's when that skill of seeing and recognizing patterns can turn into a bias, where then people maybe start to see even patterns that aren't there. She said that this can be the case in historically marginalized groups as well.
She said including people of color and indigenous people and their communities where bias on the part of medical professionals can lead to misdiagnosis. She also goes on to talk about delusions, which may include apophenia or patternicity or one possible symptom of schizophrenia, but there are other symptoms as well, just to be clear, including family history, brain chemistry, environmental exposure, substance abuse, that sort of thing.
So there are a few different types of apophenia. There's one called, it's called pareidolia, and she says that this type involves seeing an image or sound from random visual or auditory stimuli. A common form is face pareidolia, where elements of an object can make them resemble a face. And this is where you can find examples where people do feel like they see the face of someone in a piece of toast or in a cloud or any of these. And those are actually real examples
that you can find if you just Google pareidolia or apophenia in the news. And again, being fully transparent, I have been starting to use a little bit of the concepts around artificial intelligence and a little chat GBT to give examples. And that's been really fun to do within a podcast. So I did turn to chat GBT and talked about some examples of pareidolia. And it's pretty amazing if you want to start taking a look at the way that artificial intelligence
works. But within a few seconds, it shared that pareidolia is a phenomenon where brain creates meaningful patterns or shapes from random stimuli. Here are a few examples of pareidolia related to food. Faces in food. This is a common example of pareidolia in food. People often see faces or facial features in their food. For example, again, a piece of toast may have a face-like pattern or a potato may have an eye and mouth-like shape. Shapes in food. Pareidolia can
also occur in shapes of food. People may see shapes like animals, hearts, or other objects in their food. For example, a cut carrot may resemble a heart. A piece of broccoli may resemble a tree, or patterns in food. Peridolia can also occur with patterns in food. People may see patterns like hearts, flowers, or other designs in their food. For example, the way
chocolate chips are arranged in a cookie may resemble a flower pattern. And I appreciate the fact that even our artificial intelligent computers are saying it's important to note that peridolia is a natural phenomenon and not a sign of any mental health issues. It's. Simply the brain's way of finding patterns and making sense of the world around us. I remember, and this is unfortunately, I'm being a little bit lighthearted here.
Well, unfortunately, a true story where at one point I hilariously had kept a little bag of some... It was right when crunchy Cheetos came out, I have to admit. And I had a little bag of these Cheetos that looked like different things. Now, I don't remember what they look like. I think I like to tell myself that one of them looked like Winston Churchill. I don't even remember, but I thought that it was pretty funny.
And I thought that I was pretty funny in keeping them. And this is not as a child. This was in my adult years. I worry that my kids might even remember about my Cheeto collection. I don't even remember where it is right now. And someday I think it was going to be hilarious. And I hope that I don't think that it was actually going to be worth money, which I don't think that I did.
So the next one is clustering illusion. So this illusion involves seeing patterns and events and data when there is in fact no connection between data points. So the clustering illusion is one that I know that I have been guilty of as well, where.
You just start to see patterns of it would almost well, it would it would be the examples that I'm talking about this morning of that, okay, there must have been a reason why I couldn't find the decorations to decorate for my wife's birthday, which then led me to notice that I was running a little bit late and now my gas tank was empty. I needed to stop at the closer
place. And then all of a sudden I wanted this burrito. And then going to get the burrito, then I was told that I was a fugitive from the person behind the desk, which then put me in a state of paranoia where I could have checked to see if my motorcycle license is intact. I mean, so all those things would have been a clustering illusion. So I'm putting a whole cluster of data and information together in the hopes that I was going to make more sense of things.
Okay, and then turning to a chat GBT for an example, I almost thought that they let me down. They meaning the computers or the artificial intelligence, but then they were able to pull it together at the end. I asked for a give a story example of a clustering illusion and it's a story. I love this. Once upon a time, there was a farmer named Jack who owned a small farm. Jack had a large field where he grew various crops, including wheat, corn, and potatoes.
One day, Jack noticed that there were several areas in his field where the crops seemed to be growing in clusters. He thought to himself, wow, these crops are really growing together in groups. At this point, I thought, okay, I think GBT is reaching a little bit. Jack began to wonder if there was something special about these clustered areas of crops. He decided to harvest these areas separately from the rest of the field, and was surprised
to find that the yield from these areas was no different from the rest of the field. Jack, realized that he had fallen prey to a clustering illusion. He had seen patterns where there were none. So at this point I thought, okay, technically chatGBT is correct, but then they, I think they finally won me over in paragraph three. Jack learned that our brains are wired to detect
patterns and to make connections even where none exist. He now understood that just because something appears to be clustered or grouped together, it doesn't necessarily mean that there. Is any underlying reason or significance to it. From that day forward, Jack was careful to avoid making assumptions based on what appeared to be patterns and instead relied on facts and evidence
to guide his decisions. I don't know if this was Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk fame, but I can appreciate the once upon a time nature of me asking chatGBT to give me a story of a clustering illusion. So then we have two more of these types of apophenia. One, the next one is one that I think you may have heard of. It's called confirmation bias. And confirmation bias is this tendency to accept only information that confirms our prior beliefs. And there was
a podcast that I never aired. I had some technical difficulties with it. And it really was at the very beginning of the pandemic. And I was able to dig it back up and I need to run it through some sort of audio program because I think that the concepts, although at the time I feel like they would have been a little bit controversial, but there was a clinical psychologist who she came on and talked about the difficulties of having a rainbow baby
early on in the virtual couch on one of the virtual couch episodes. But then she came on again and talked about why there was such polarity in the country at the beginning of the pandemic. And she talked about people that would have a cognitive bias towards something. And then once they were locked in with their cognitive bias, then they in essence looked for this confirmation bias and just tried to find data that backed up their side. And
I was having such a hard time trying to remember the name, and it's Dr. Laura Sparrow. And I really feel like that would be a good episode to just dig back out of the archives and put as a bonus because the concepts around cognitive bias and confirmation bias fit very well, and I didn't recognize that they were a form of this apophenia. So let me give you a couple of examples that I think might help.
So cognitive bias, then just by pure definition, refers to these systematic errors or these deviations from our what we might deem our rational judgment of or decision making that occurs as a result of the way that we are mental processes. So those can include memory, attention, perception and the things that we make sense of in our mind, our reasoning.
And these biases, these cognitive biases, can cause us to make faulty judgments or even misinterpret information that we may normally view in a completely different way, or we might even hold some inaccurate beliefs. And what can be really difficult, why I think that this concept of apophenia is so important to begin to talk about is because when we start only seeing in patterns, sometimes we don't even recognize that we are just feeding our own ego.
And we're just starting to create this echo chamber, and then it's really hard for us to try and understand other people's situations and our circumstances. So we may find or think that we're some of the most empathetic people in the world, but. Yet we're unable to step outside of our ego and understand other people's circumstances or situations. And you might even say, well, why, if I'm just having my own experience or my own life?
And it's because I really believe that ultimately one of those things that we just don't know until we know is that we're here on Earth to grow and to become, to become, and I don't want to just say become better or more, but there's this process of unfolding or enlightening or all of these wonderful terms.
But when we just go around saying, this is who I am, and then we want everybody to validate who we think that we are, we're ultimately going to be led to feel pretty frustrated because the people around us aren't necessarily seeing this person that we think that we really are. And so it's really difficult for us at times to then say, What if I'm not this person who I think that I am?
And what is just becomes impactful and lightning, and it can be a very positive thing, is to be able to start to become okay with yourself, so that then when you are putting out this version of yourself, and somebody says, actually, I don't know if that's the version I see, then that's where we can self-confront.
That's what this concept of differentiation means, of recognizing that I am a completely separate person than this person that I am in a relationship with, or this person that is my parent. And so it becomes pretty exciting at some point when you start to feel more confident about yourself. And ironically, the way that you become more confident is to recognize that this is your experience in life. And you don't need to just say, hey, this is who I am, everybody,
and tell me that that's what you think as well. But we can start to say, okay, this is who I wanna become. And so I can confidently ask others around me, hey, what version are you seeing? And then I can take a look introspectively and say, okay, that's a decent point.
I think I'm the most fun-loving guy in the world, but actually, until I'm not, and I want to just block out these times where I may not recognize that I am not being the most fun-loving person in the world, and so I want people to only validate the times where I am the most fun-loving person in the world, but meanwhile, they're not quite sure which version of me is walking in the door.
So if I'm trying to become more emotionally mature and more stable and more solid and more confident, more consistent, then I welcome that data, because then I can take a look at it and I can do something about it. So I can recognize that, oh, there are times where I'm putting out these completely mixed messages. So I can gather myself. I can get very present with myself and I can show up different because it's better for me.
Not so that other people will say, oh, there you go. I like that version of you. But it's so that I start to like that version of myself, the version that is authentic, the version that's consistent. But again, I digress. So talking about these cognitive biases. So a modern day example is the concept we talk about often, or you hear talked about often, of this fake news or its impact on
people's beliefs and behaviors. So people are more likely to believe or share information that confirms their own pre-existing beliefs, even if that information is inaccurate or misleading. So the confirmation bias then can be reinforced by other cognitive biases.
So the confirmation bias is almost this giant umbrella, and then the cognitive biases are things that then we look for underneath that umbrella to verify or validate that, well, our cognition or cognitive bias must be right, such as, and there are a lot of different cognitive biases. There's a thing called, there's one called the heuristic availability heuristic, which just means it's believing that something is possible.
We are more familiar with, that is more common or frequent, that it's easily more recalled in memory, that it must be true. Or there's a thing called the anchoring bias, which means that we're influenced by an initial reference point or an anchor. I told this story a while ago, but I have a son who's playing college basketball. He's a shooter. He's a very good athlete, but he's a shooter. And one of the first scrimmages that was open to the public at this college, he happened
to make a move off the dribble and somebody stumbled and fell. The proverbial, he broke broke their ankles. And so it was so funny to hear the crowd then, whenever he got the ball, you would almost hear people, well, you did, you heard people around going, Oh, I wonder if he's going to do it again. And then he would hit a deep shot and people, there were a couple of people sitting around us that said, Oh wow, he can shoot as well.
Because they thought, no, this guy just drives. This guy breaks people's ankles. But in reality, he shoots, he shoots and he shoots and he shoots and he shoots from farther out and then he shoots again. And every now and again, he may take somebody off the dribble, but They're anchoring this, it's so funny, this anchoring bias is that the first thing they saw was this dribble move, so now that is what they're basing the rest of their experience of who he is as a basketball player.
That anchoring bias can really do a number on our then cognitive biases or our confirmation biases. There's also a really interesting one called the halo effect, which is where we attribute positive or negative qualities to a person or thing based off of this overall impression.
So if we've heard a lot of good things about somebody, and then we interact with them, and then we feel like, wow, they do seem pretty cool, then all of a sudden, we've given this halo effect, and everything they do is funny, and everything they say is spot on, and I even like the things they're wearing, and wow, that guy eats ham sandwiches too? I mean, this guy is so cool. And so let me just give you an example then. So for instance, let's just say that a person
has a politically, a political view. They can either be conservative or they could be a liberal and they're browsing social media and they come across an article that has a sensational headline that confirms their belief that the other, that the other side is trying to destroy the country.
So if it's a liberal and they say the conservatives are trying to destroy the country, if they're conservative and they read something that says liberals are trying to destroy the country that even if that article is inaccurate or misleading, the person is more likely to believe it and then share it with others because it fits their pre-existing beliefs, it fits, their cognitive bias, and then it can lead to this reinforcing cycle of a confirmation
bias because now that person is going to seek out more or similar articles and discount any contradictory information. And this is one of those big challenges if you watch some of the documentaries that are talking about the negative impacts of social media, is now we can actually then target that if you liked this article or you liked this particular ad, then game on. Then you are going to get more of those articles and more of those ads.
I know I already made a mistake this morning where I just had an ad that had popped up that looked like these really cool customizable bobbleheads. And I thought that might be kind of fun for somebody that I know or care about. And I even thought, as I click on this now. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the next week of customizable figurines, bobbleheads, stuffed animals, all these things that I will get ads for nonstop.
That can be, I mean, eventually I'm going to end up buying them or I joked before about once I click on a soap, then I know I will eventually be buying some sort of a very good smelling soap because I'm going to get led to some ad page or landing page. I'm going to get hooked. I'm going to buy it. And then I just have to know that I'm going to be inundated with soap ads for the next month. customizable bobbleheads.
So that cognitive bias, though, which leads to then the confirmation bias, I think is just a really, really fascinating example. I looked for a couple of other examples of confirmation bias, and there was a really interesting one. I asked for a modern-day example of confirmation bias, and here was the story that was provided. A modern-day example of confirmation bias is a person who is convinced that a certain alternative medicine product will cure their illness.
So they may search online for information that supports their belief. They may ignore or dismiss any evidence that contradicts it. They may also selectively remember only the positive experiences they or others have had with the product and discount or forget any negative experiences. This can then lead them to continue using the product despite its lack of effectiveness and then potentially put their health at risk by delaying or avoiding conventional medical treatment.
Last, but not least, we have a type of apophenia called the gambler's fallacy. This type involves believing that a prior series of events affects a future event even though the two are completely unrelated. So let me give you a literal gambler's version of the gambler's fallacy, as well as a non-gambling version. A modern day example would just simply be if you're in a casino and there's a gambler who is convinced that they are due for a win because they have lost several times in a row.
And I know as someone that I am by no means a high stakes gambler, but every now and again, if I'm walking through a casino, I remember going to trade shows in Las Vegas year after year when I was in the computer industry, and it was as if the universe had, I don't think smiled, maybe frowned upon, me. And I put two quarters in a machine one time waiting to check in at a big hotel, and I, think I won $50 just with one pull of the slot machine. And so at that point, oh, that was really easy.
And even for a while, I did the classic, oh, I'm sure I've won more than I've lost, but I'm sure that is absolutely not the case. But the gambler's fallacy would be if I have pulled that handle five times in a row and lost, then it kind of made sense that I was due for a win. But there's just nothing to really back that up at all. So, due for a win, you're convinced you're due for a win because you've
lost several times in a row. So then the gambler in that scenario believes that because the odds of losing so many times in a row are low, then their chance of winning must be higher. However, this is a fallacy because every spin of a roulette wheel or every hand of cards dealt or every time you pull that handle is an independent event rather than working with the same probability or winning or losing over time because one has lost a lot in a row. So that is absolutely
a gambling example of the gambler's fallacy. And then a non-gambling episode, a non-gambling example might be somebody, I was talking with somebody that was taking a test a few days ago and they said there was a multiple choice test and they had answered the last three or four questions incorrectly. And so then they just start to believe that, okay, the next one I have to get right because I've gotten three or four in a row wrong. So therefore
I am due for a correct answer. However, just like this gambling example, the probability of answering each question correctly is independent of the previous one. And so therefore in that scenario, that student's belief is part of this gambler's fallacy. And, and I don't know why, but then it just popped into my mind. I just thought, man, as a gambler's fallacy, is that in line with this concept that I think we run into often as well called the sunk cost fallacy.
And if you're familiar with that, and it turns out that, I mean, if you really break it down, they're two completely different fallacies, but the sunk cost fallacy and the gambler's fallacy are two different cognitive biases. The, the sunk cost fallacy refers to the tendency to continue investing in something, whether it's money or time, even if it's no longer rational, because
of the time or the money or the effort that you've already invested. And I feel like you can even see the sunk cost fallacy in even things like relationships. So the gambler's fallacy, on the other hand, then refers to this belief, again, that this probability that a random event is affected by the previous events, even when the events
are independent of each other. But then both biases involve faulty decision-making based on past events, but they are conceptually different and they actually involve different and cognitive processes. So those are your different types of apophenia. Back to this article by Kathy Lovering, just some, quick examples. So apophenia exists in various realms of life. She says most people experience
it at one time or another, and these experiences are usually harmless and natural. So some examples, you see emotion in a natural scene, like tree bark arranged to look like a bellowing mouth, or you interpret an everyday object as looking like a face, again, such as a fire hydrant with two round spouts above a single line. There's a fire hydrant as you come into my neighborhood that looks like a minion. I love it. I love it. I love every time I see it.
You a gambler who then sees a winning streak as a sign that they'll continue to win, or a scientist who sees a group of medical cases and they believe that's a cluster due to a confirmation bias or ascribing too much meaning to unrelated points of data. Real clusters are thoroughly investigated before scientists confirm them. Or she says that somebody believes that an authority is out to get them because of patterns in media or everyday occurrences.
They might also think that media personalities are speaking directly to them, and this is an example of a paranoid delusion. So then, although this patternicity might be connected to our survival instincts, its. Central feature is that connections that people see aren't necessarily there, but it's something that our brain wants certainty. I say this so often that our brain just wants to know.
It wants certainty and often one of the greatest tricks that I feel like our brain plays on us is that our brain says, it says that, no, I know what certainty feels like, because if you think of the concept of, I know what two plus two feels like in my brain, four, and it feels right. And then I believe that our brain just seeks that certainty for all kinds of things. Should I stay in an unhealthy relationship? And what should I do for a career? How should I,
how should I, you know, communicate to a loved one something difficult? And our brain says, man, once I can really get certainty, then I'll do whatever it is. And it goes back to that acceptance and commitment therapy book by Russ Harris, the confidence gap that the fallacy that we have is saying that once I am confident, then I will do whatever the thing is. But in reality, we have to do the thing to gain the confidence. And then just one more quick thing, in the article
she has a section that says apophenia versus synchronicity. So synchronicity is a term coined by the psychoanalyst Carl Jung and it refers to causal connections or when things become related even though there's no obvious link to them. So this idea was part of Jung's notion of a collective human unconscious. So according to Jung this was at the root of some of the behaviors and and thoughts and dreams that people have.
So, synchronicity is difficult to study objectively because it's a one-time event that can't be measured across an entire population, and it's also something that's experienced only by one person. So, while two people can participate in the same event, such as running into a certain person, it may only be an incidence of synchronicity for that one person.
So, in his book, The Improbability Principle, renowned statistician David Hand argues that people underestimate the actual probability of apparently rare events, that they're actually not that rare at all. So since synchronicity can't be scientifically studied and coincidences are more statistically probable than people realize it, then synchronicity may be a form of apophenia.
And what this can look like is you may be at Disneyland and you run into something that haven't seen someone that you haven't seen since high school. And then you just think, this is the universe speaking. This is this moment of synchronicity. And again, back to this renowned statistician David Hand, he argues that then again, people underestimate the actual probability of apparently rare events, that they may not
actually be rare at all. So sometimes people may say, man, what are the chances or what are the odds? And some statistician may say, well, they're actually not as rare as you think. So again, since synchronicity can't be studied and coincidences are more statistically probable than people realize, then that actually may be a form of apophenia as well. So, I would love to,
get your thoughts, your comments. If you have questions or examples of apophenia, feel free to comment wherever this is posted, or you can send me something through the website, or send me an email, contact at tonyoverbay.com. And I just appreciate the point in the article
where she says, what are the next steps that apophenia is? It's common, it's harmless, it can be just a part of everyday life, but it can also make daily life more challenging if it it starts to become almost part of a psychosis, such as paranoia or delusions. And I can't help but to look at things like, and I'm so invested in this, uh.
Lori Vallow trial or the one that will come up after this Chad Daybell, or if, you're not familiar with, with those trials or those concepts, I'm going to talk a lot about them more in the future and even over on the murder on the couch podcast, but sometimes people just want to feel so special or they want to just
make sense of things. And that's where something like apophenia goes from being common, harmless and part of your everyday life into more of almost the psychosis of such as paranoia or delusions because then people start to just lock in and think that they're seeing patterns and they're trying to make sense of everything and that they now all of a sudden have the keys to the universe. And as you see in those court cases, it ended up being some really, really negative results.
We'd love to get your thoughts, your opinions, and taking us out per usual, the wonderful, the talented Aurora Florence with her song, It's Wonderful. And I will see you next week. Music.