- Sep 12, 2008
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Interesting Scientific American article.
When folks have little control over their lives, they seek to make patterns where none exist in order to gain psychological control over their destinies.
This explains the pattern of conspiracy activists being unemployable mama's boys tied down to the basement.
When folks have little control over their lives, they seek to make patterns where none exist in order to gain psychological control over their destinies.
This explains the pattern of conspiracy activists being unemployable mama's boys tied down to the basement.
Defining illusory pattern perception (what I call patternicity) as the identification of a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random or unrelated stimuli ... (such as the tendency to perceive false correlations, see imaginary figures, form superstitious rituals, and embrace conspiracy beliefs, among others), the researchers thesis was that when individuals are unable to gain a sense of control objectively, they will try to gain it perceptually. As Whitson explained the psychology to me, Feelings of control are essential for our well-beingwe think clearer and make better decisions when we feel we are in control. Lacking control is highly aversive, so we instinctive ly seek out patterns to regain controleven if those patterns are illusory.
Whitson and Galinsky sat subjects before a computer screen, telling one group they must guess which of two images embodied an underlying concept the computer had selected. For example, they might see a capital A and a lowercase t colored, underlined, or surrounded by a circle or square. Subjects would then guess at an underlying concept, such as all capital As are red. There was no actual underlying conceptthe computer was programmed to tell the subjects randomly that they were either correct or incorrect. Consequently, they developed a sense of lacking control.