The Frequency Illusion

You decide to buy a certain kind of car, and suddenly you see it everywhere. A friend recommends an obscure movie to you, and by the end of the week, three more people have mentioned it. You find out you’re having a baby and now you’re surrounded by pregnant women in every shopping aisle, church classroom, and train station. It’s not just you, and it is a real thing. So real, in fact, that there are actual names for it. Known as Blue Car syndrome, or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, this is when we hear or experience something and suddenly it seems to appear everywhere.

It’s also called frequency illusion, which, of course, implies these things are not, in actuality, happening or appearing more often than normal, but because they have been brought to your attention, your brain notices them more often.