{"id":562765,"date":"2026-05-02T17:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T17:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/562765\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T17:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T17:39:12","slug":"everything-everywhere-occurring-often-all-at-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/562765\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything Everywhere, Occurring Often All at Once"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of us have likely had the experience of learning something new and then suddenly seeing it everywhere. When a friend spoke about an appliance I hadn\u2019t heard of before, I suddenly saw it in others\u2019 kitchens and heard people raving about it. Or when my book club read about Enneagram personality<\/a> typing, I started to see various books on the topic and hear numerous people referencing their type. It seemed like there was suddenly an uptick in frequency, but really, my brain was just more aware of instances all around me.<\/p>\n

This type of experience is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, the frequency illusion<\/a>, which is the brain\u2019s proclivity toward looking for patterns. When we learn something new, we unconsciously scan our world for matches and are alerted to confirmations. When we discover a new word, name, or product, we then seem to come across it more frequently. We are primed, pay attention<\/a>, and see it \u201ceverywhere.\u201d Psychologists might refer to this as combining two common cognitive tendencies: selective attention (focusing our attention on something) and confirmation bias<\/a> (feeling confirmed in an idea when it is seen more frequently).<\/p>\n

This is not the same experience as researching something on our phone or computer one day and then being inundated with ads for that merchandise or experience in the weeks that follow. That is related to those clever (and somewhat unsettling) marketing<\/a> algorithms that know when we have investigated something and then attempt to pull us back into purchasing the specific thing. But marketing does lean on this frequency phenomenon somewhat, using those browsing habits of ours and then reinforcing something, as we apparently do tend to be pulled to purchase if we see something more often or feel that it might indeed be a popular item.<\/p>\n

There are three different directions in which our brain can take this phenomenon and related tendencies, and increased awareness of these options allows us to be a bit more focused on maximizing our human cognitive capability in positive directions.<\/p>\n

Neutral Application<\/p>\n

This frequency illusion can, at its core, be fun and innocuous. It might be fascinating to notice how things repeat or cluster when we make a discovery involving a word, historical fact, or product. It may feel almost magical and coincidental, but greater awareness of this intriguing way our brain works allows us to engage in more metacognition<\/a> about our internal patterns. This is psychology in action.<\/p>\n

Negative Application<\/p>\n

Sadly, sometimes there can also be ways in which selective attention spirals more negatively.<\/p>\n

On a more minor level, we might call this the \u201cum effect.\u201d If we are annoyed by how often a speaker says \u201cum\u201d (or \u201cyou know\u201d or \u201clike\u201d), we might find ourselves paying excessive attention to this feature of speech. A friend might have heard the same story but didn\u2019t notice or get bothered by this language pattern. But if we tune in to something, that something often gets magnified.<\/p>\n

This can also occur in relationships and can cause significant conflict. If we have convinced ourselves that someone doesn\u2019t care, we might seek out all the examples of ways in which they may seem less attentive or are behaving in an uncaring way. If we are relying on assumptions and guesses (rather than facts), many of these thought patterns can end up being incorrect; however, when we are highlighting and counting off all of the ways that negativity might be present, it can feel very real, significant, and hurtful.<\/p>\n

Bias and prejudice can also get reinforced in this way. If we are oriented to negative qualities, we tend to see them more. If someone tells us a particular city is really clean or really dirty, we are likely tuned in to seeing examples of either category (orienting almost automatically to all the shining buildings or looking for trash on the ground). Discrimination<\/a> occurs naturally in a much more serious and insidious way, often reinforced in family or friendship<\/a> circles. If we hear something repeated often by others around us, we can end up absorbing the ideas without having looked at broader, more balanced views. We are not born with bias; it is learned, like an imprint on our brain.<\/p>\n

A related concept is confirmation bias. We all tend to seek out information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs; this is naturally more comfortable and reinforcing. Psychologists who study this domain have found that stereotypes prime us with expectations, and confirmation bias motivates us to focus on anything that confirms our preconceptions and overlook the rest. These sorts of beliefs get woven into our unconscious<\/a> minds. We don\u2019t have to act endlessly on our unconscious biases; however, it does take time to disentangle them, and we certainly can\u2019t do this if we are not aware of these tendencies.<\/p>\n

Positive Application<\/p>\n

Fortunately, we can also utilize the frequency illusion and attentiveness in constructive and productive ways.<\/p>\n

Gratitude<\/a> practice is a prime example of using selective attention in a positive way. When we are oriented to seeking out things in our world that are joyful or pleasant, we then tend to look for them in the coming days. Starting a gratitude habit can be difficult, but once we practice more consistently, noticing things throughout the day that we can later highlight and savor tends to make good things seem to occur more often. Noticing more has a cumulative effect.<\/p>\n

Positive Psychology Essential Reads<\/p>\n

The color-finding exercise is another example of a practice that uses neutral stimuli to cultivate positive attention. If I am frustrated by how long it takes for a medical appointment to begin or by standing in a long line at the post office, I might look for five things in the environment<\/a> that are yellow, five that are red, and so on through the rainbow. There are often more spots of color than expected in the assumed-to-be-dull environments, and this keeps me from over-focusing on the annoyance of waiting. The applications are endless.<\/p>\n

Similarly, amidst interpersonal conflicts with people we care about, we can actively reflect on the good, the important, and the positive characteristics that help us balance our perspective in a tough situation.<\/p>\n

Looking for the positive and actively orienting toward the good does not take away distress or negativity, but interrupting patterns and experimenting with new kinds and quantities of sensory awareness can help. As Maria sings in
“My Favorite Things” (from The Sound of Music), \u201cI simply remember my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reframing and Rewiring<\/p>\n

We know that where our attention goes, energy flows, and neurons grow. This concept was a fundamental axiom of neuropsychology founder Donald Hebb and remains central to our understanding of neurological patterning and change. In fact, the notion of neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to change, is based on this truth.<\/p>\n

Repetition of old, habitual thoughts or ways of orienting will only reinforce established neural<\/a> networks and behaviors. But new orientations to experiences and environments produce changes in the brain, for better and for worse; what we do, how we do it, and with whom we engage matters.<\/p>\n

So, in sum, we can have fun with the playful, neutral examples of the frequency illusion phenomenon as it occurs less-than-randomly throughout life, but we also have the power to engage mindfully in paying attention to negative domains that need rewiring and to positive spheres that deserve more frequency exposure. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most of us have likely had the experience of learning something new and then suddenly seeing it everywhere.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-562765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}