5 psychological phenomena you’ve never heard of but definitely experienced
You know when you have some kind of mind-blowing moment of a false memory that you share with someone else, or you start to see your new car has been bought by everyone else, too? Well, there’s a term for both of those phenomena.
1. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon
This one is also known as a “frequency illusion”, and is used to describe the illusion in which a word or object that has suddenly come to your attention is seemingly everywhere. Did you learn a new word today? You’ll be reading and hearing it everywhere. Did you buy a new car? Every other person on the road owns the same one in the same colour. This is explained by the simple fact that you are temporarily focused on this word or object, so it no longer escapes your notice.
2. Jamais vu
This French term is the opposite of the more commonly known “déjà vu”, and translates to “never seen”. Basically, this phenomenon is when you are in a situation you recognise in some way, but that still seems completely unfamiliar. The best way to experience this for yourself is to write or say aloud the same word repeatedly – you will soon begin to question the reality of the word itself, despite knowing for certain that it is real.
3. The Mandela Effect
Have you ever remembered something that wasn’t a real memory? That’s understandable – we can often confuse dreams or fictional stories with real memories. What is unusual is when multiple people falsely recall the same thing. These “collective false memories” range from misremembering the title of the popular picture book series The Berenstain Bears (people will swear that it was BerenstEin), to the believing that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s (he died at home in 2013).
4. Out-group homogeneity effect
This is the perception of a person or group of people that “out-group” members are more similar to one another in comparison to those within the “in-group”. Basically, this is a way of explaining why we often view people from different sub-cultures as having a lot of similarities, and why many people view people from different ethnic backgrounds as being alike to their fellows, while their own groups are perceived as diverse.
5. The rule of 6 handshakes
Sometimes referred to as “six degrees of separation” or “six degrees of Kevin Bacon”, this is the idea that every living thing in the world (though the more popular variation of this phenomenon simply concerns people) are connected to each other through six or fewer degrees of separation. The idea was popularised by the 1990 play (and 1993 film) by John Guare, Six Degrees of Seperation.
How many of these phenomena have you experienced before? Let us know in the comments below.