• by Sophie Kleber , February 10, 2010

Belief is the natural state of things, as our inner belief engine tries to seek patterns and make connections. Disbelief is uncomfortable.

Patternicity: The tendency to find meaningful patterns where they exist and also where they don't exist. Patternicity comes with types of errors:

Type 1: the false positive finds a patterns where there is none, the false negative disregards a pattern even if there is one.

Type 2 errors are more dangerous, and the determination between these errors is difficult.

The inner pattern detector can easily be fooled by:

1. Cognitive priming - the tendency to make up patterns based on previous experiences or beliefs (i.e. belief in super-natural)

2. Dopamine - people with higher dopamine levels see more patterns = type 1 errors (see also paranoia as a form of highly increased patternicity), people with too low dopamine levels (i.e. cocaine use) do not identify patterns = type 2 errors

3. Evolved facial recognition: Humans see faces everywhere.

4. The wish to explain and understand the higher drives behind this world (religion, belief in aliens, higher powers and intelligences, conspiracies, etc.) also drives false identification of patterns.

The power of expectation and the power of belief are forceful drivers in the human assessment and judgment. So beware...