Patternicity Is the Tendency to Find Meaningful Patterns in Randomness

Patternicity is the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise. Our brains are wired to connect dots and create causal stories, a trait that is essential for learning and scientific discovery.

However, this pattern-seeking drive often leads us to make two types of errors:

Type I Error (False Positive): Believing a pattern is real when it is not (e.g., seeing a face in the clouds, believing in a conspiracy).
Type II Error (False Negative): Not believing a pattern is real when it is (e.g., dismissing early evidence of a real threat).

From an evolutionary perspective, the cost of a Type I error (e.g., thinking a rustle in the grass is a predator when it's just the wind) is much lower than the cost of a Type II error (e.g., thinking the rustle is the wind when it's a predator). Therefore, we have evolved to be hyper-sensitive pattern-seekers, preferring to make many false positive errors to avoid a single fatal false negative.

Patternicity and Misbelief

This innate tendency is a foundational element of misbelief.

It drives us to see connections between unrelated events.
It makes us susceptible to Illusory Correlations.
Individuals with a higher degree of patternicity are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, as they are more adept at seeing the "hidden connections" that form the basis of these narratives.

When combined with a general sense of suspicion, patternicity becomes a powerful engine for generating and sustaining misbeliefs.

Tags: #psychology #cognition #patternicity #bias #evolution #misbelief #superstition