Illusory Correlations

While doing the summer homework (during the first week of school) this concept really caught my attention. I thought it was so interesting that when we believe two things have a correlation, our brain will go out of its way to find a connection. A scary but exciting feature of the brain. It was not surprising to me to continue reading and find out that when two random events happen in sequence, our mind is even more likely to combine these events and find a relationship among them.  

Because of the concept of illusory correlations, many superstitious beliefs arise.  This may have been the coolest part for me. Finding out that the reason why we think for example that infertile couples that adopt are more likely to conceive really has no basis but in fact is because of illusory correlations rocked my socks off. It really was awesome because I myself thought that way because it seems like it always happens that way. But in reality it is not like that. After reading this section it became obvious to me that of course my mind is not going to remember the infertile couple that adopted and then stayed infertile. This realization is really what caught my attention during this part of the reading and is the reason why I find illusory correlations so interesting.

One last thing to add is the essence of illusory correlations. When we see things that are random, we forget that they are random and therefore we see them as correlated. In return we see things that are not there. So it is important to remember that although fascinating, illusory correlations are not good by nature because they disorient us and therefore we should try to take them out of our lives.