How to stop looking for meaning where it is not

People for centuries linked the unusual behavior with the full moon. In the Middle Ages, for example, people sincerely believed that the moon is full, you can turn into a werewolf. In the XVIII century it was assumed that the full moon - the cause of seizures and fever. Such beliefs are reflected even in the language: for example, the word "lunatic" is derived from the Latin root lunaThe moon.

Today, as one, with few exceptions, did not consider. Although we no longer associate the sickness or disease from the phases of the moon, you can sometimes hear someone thinking justifies the moon abnormal behavior. For example, after a chaotic day nurse at the hospital he can say, "It must be today the full moon."

There is no evidence that the moon affects our behavior. At full analysis of 30 studies on the subject, there was no relationship between the full moon and hospitalization, losing in the casino, suicides, car accidents, crimes and other widespread incidents.

But here's the funny thing: even though all the studies say the opposite, a survey in 2005 showed that 7 out of 10 nurses still believe that the full moon increases the number of patients. So what's really going on?

It's not the folly of nurses who swear that the full moon is due to unusual behavior. They simply became victims of a typical psychological trap, which affects each of us in varying degrees. Psychologists call this mistake of thinking "illusory correlation". And we try to understand how it works.

As we deceive ourselves, without realizing it

Illusory correlation appears when we mistakenly overestimate one conclusion and ignore everyone else. Let's imagine that you come to New York, we went down into the subway, and someone pushes you when you are going to go to the car. Then you go to a restaurant where the waiter was rude to you. Finally, you ask a passer-by how to get to such and such a street, and he ignores your question and just passes by.

When you return from your trip, you can easily remember this unpleasant experience and conclude that "people in New York, rude" or "the people in the big cities the rough."

However, you forget about all the trips to the restaurant when the waiter behaved completely normal. Or the hundreds of people who walked past you on the subway station and not touched. It is not perceived as an event, because it was not anything remarkable. Thus, it is easier to remember how someone behaved rudely towards you, than those times when you have a great lunch and calmly rode on the subway.

Hundreds of psychological studies show that we tend to overestimate the significance of the events that can easily remember, and, conversely, underestimating the events that recall with difficulty.

The lighter remember incident, the more likely it is that we mentally create a strong connection between the two events or things. Although often it turns out that they are related to each other weakly or not related at all.

How to recognize the illusory correlation

There is a simple way to recognize their hidden errors and protect themselves from the stereotypical thinking and prejudice. You will need to make a table of conjugation: it will help you visualize the events that you do not usually notice and ignore.

Let's return to our example of a full moon and a crazy night, when admitted to the hospital a lot of people.

Test Crosstabs

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A. Cell Full moon and difficult time. This is a very memorable combination, and we overestimate these two events, as they are easy to conjure up.

Box B. Full moon, but nothing unusual happens. Since the event itself is not, our memory it underestimates. It's hard to remember what happened, so we tend to ignore the cell.

Cell C. There is a full moon, but a lot to do at work. It can be attributed to the "crazy time".

Box D. There is a full moon and a perfectly ordinary night. Nothing memorable occurred, so the two events are also easy to ignore.

conjugation table helps to understand how people think nurses during a full moon. They are quick to remember the times when there was a full moon and the hospital was crowded, simply forgetting when it was a full moon, and the number of incoming patients were in the normal range. Since they can easily remember the full moon and a crazy night working, they erroneously begin to believe that the two events are related.

How to stop thinking wrongly

We are faced with the illusory correlation in various spheres of life.

• We all know that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college to start a multibillion-dollar business. And easy mentally to overestimate this story. Meanwhile, you'll never hear stories about people who dropped out of college and were not able to build a successful company. You only hear about the successes and never - about the failures, although the number of failure many times the victory.
• On the TV show, the police arrested a person of any nationality, and you can link the tendency to criminal behavior and nationality, even if 99% of representatives of this ethnic group never violate the law.
• You've heard the news of the shark attack on humans and therefore are no longer swim in the ocean. Since then, as you swim in the ocean for the last time, the chances of shark attacks have not increased, but you will never hear news about people who quietly and without incident swim in the ocean. The news never gets the story with the headline "Millions of tourists swim in the ocean every day, and everything is good."

Most people do not realize how selective our memory for events that, in turn, have a direct impact on our beliefs. We simply do not remember ordinary events. We are on the machine begin to believe that they are not important or rare.

If you know how the erroneous thinking, and will try to analyze it (for example, by method of contingency table), you can discover their hidden prejudices which are not even suspected. But if you do not know about them, it does not mean that they do not affect your life every day.