Baader-Meinhof phenomenon

English

Etymology

Named in 1994 after the West German Baader-Meinhof Group of the 1970s, when a commentator unexpectedly heard two references to the group within 24 hours. The group is named after two of its leaders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof.

Noun

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (plural not attested)

  1. (psychology) A cognitive bias by which a recently learned word, concept, etc. suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency.
    Synonyms: Baader-Meinhof effect, frequency illusion
    • [2025 December 25, Elle Hunt, “Paranoia, pop-dubstep and perfectly odd gems: the best old music we discovered this year”, in The Guardian‎[1], →ISSN, archived from the original on 25 December 2025:
      There’s a well-known cognitive bias where, after you become aware of something new, you start seeing it everywhere. It’s known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, but from this year, I’ll think of it as the Katy B effect, after Katy on a Mission became the unexpected soundtrack of my summer.]

Further reading

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.