Apophenia

Apophenia

Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness".

In statistics, apophenia would be classed as a Type I error (false positive, false alarm, caused by an excess in sensitivity). Apophenia is often used as an explanation of some paranormal and religious claims, and can also be used to explain the tendency of humans to believe pseudoscience. Apophenia may be linked to psychosis and creativity.Fact|date=July 2008

Conrad originally described this phenomenon in relation to the distortion of reality present in psychosis, but it has become more widely used to describe this tendency in healthy individuals without necessarily implying the presence of neurological or mental illness.

Examples

Pareidolia

Pareidolia is a type of apophenia involving the finding of images or sounds in random stimuli. For example, hearing a ringing phone whilst taking a shower. The noise produced by the running water gives a random background from which the patterned sound of a ringing phone might be 'produced'.

Fiction

Postmodern novelists and film-makers have reflected on apophenia-related phenomena, such as paranoid narrativization or fuzzy plotting (e.g., Vladimir Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols", Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49" and "V.", Alan Moore's "Watchmen", Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" and "Foucault's Pendulum", William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition", James Curcio's "Join My Cult", Arturo Pérez-Reverte's "The Club Dumas", "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, and the films "Conspiracy Theory", Darren Aronofsky's "π", "A Beautiful Mind", "The Number 23" and "The Nines"). As narrative is one of our major cognitive instruments for structuring reality, there is some common ground between apophenia and narrative fallacies such as hindsight bias. Since pattern recognition may be related to plans, goals, and ideology, and may be a matter of group ideology rather than a matter of solitary delusion, the interpreter attempting to diagnose or identify apophenia may have to face a conflict of interpretations.

The Question, who is portrayed as a conspiracy theorist in the animated television series "Justice League Unlimited", was mentioned to have apophenia. He claimed to see connections between the Girl Scouts and the crop circle phenomenon as well as spy satellites and fluoridated toothpaste.

ee also

* Clustering illusion
* Confirmation bias
* Conspiracy theory
* Forer effect
* Synchronicity
* Hindsight bias

Notes and references

*cite book|first=Mica R.|last=Endslay|year=2004|title=A Cognitive Approach To Situation Awareness:: Theory and Application|editor=Simon Banbury, Sébastien Tremblay|edition=1st|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|location=USA|id=ISBN 0754641988
* Klaus Conrad, 1958, "Die beginnende Schizophrenie. Versuch einer Gestaltanalyse des Wahns". Stuttgart: Thieme.
* Sherlock, P. [http://truth.gooberbear.com/?q=node/5 "On roulette wheels and monkies randomly inspired by Shakespeare"] , "truth.gooberbear", April 1, 2008. Accessed April 1, 2008.
* William Gibson, 2003, "Pattern Recognition". New York: G. P. Putnam's, 2003.

External links

* [http://skepdic.com/apophenia.html Skeptic's Dictionary] : Robert Todd Carroll's article on apophenia
* [http://www.dbskeptic.com/2007/11/04/apophenia-definition-and-analysis/ DBSkeptic] : Sandra Hubscher's analysis of apophenia


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • apophenia —    Also known as apophany. Etymologically, both terms appear to stem from the Greek words apo (away from, apart) and phainein (to show, to make appear). It has been suggested, however, that apophenia results from a misspelling and that the proper …   Dictionary of Hallucinations

  • apophenia — noun The perception of or belief in connectedness among unrelated phenomena …   Wiktionary

  • Electronic voice phenomenon — Electronic voice phenomena (EVP) are sections of static noise on the radio or electronic recording that some listeners believe sound like voices speaking words; paranormal investigators sometimes interpret these noises as the voices of ghosts or… …   Wikipedia

  • History Of Guns — Infobox musical artist Name = History Of Guns Img capt = Img size = Landscape = Background = group or band Alias = Origin = flagicon|United KingdomUnited Kingdom Genre = Industrial, Dance, Punk, Goth, Alternative rock, Indie Years active = 1996… …   Wikipedia

  • Pattern Recognition (novel) — infobox Book | name = Pattern Recognition image caption = Original 1st edition cover author = William Gibson cover artist = country = United States language = English series = genre = Science fiction novel publisher = G. P. Putnam s Sons release… …   Wikipedia

  • Clustering illusion — The clustering illusion refers to the tendency erroneously to perceive small samples from random distributions to have significant streaks or clusters , caused by a human tendency to underpredict the amount of variability likely to appear in a… …   Wikipedia

  • Pareidolia — The term pareidolia (pronEng|pæraɪˈdoʊliə) describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds,… …   Wikipedia

  • Numerology — is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs. Numerology and numerological divination by systems such as isopsephy were popular among early… …   Wikipedia

  • Palindrome — Palindromes redirects here. For the film, see Palindromes (film). See also: Constrained writing A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction, with general allowances for… …   Wikipedia

  • Paradox — For other uses, see Paradox (disambiguation). Further information: List of paradoxes A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition. Typically,… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”