As I meandered through the farmers market, picking out the perfect produce to nourish my blueberry-sized baby in utero, I noticed something peculiar: pregnant women and moms with newborns were everywhere. Bellies at all stages of bloom squeezed between the tables, the lineup at the food truck was like a lookbook of baby carriers and the crowd at the music tent looked like everyone was there to see the Wiggles. How odd, I thought, that the place I used to meet my girlfriends for samples of cider and soft cheese had become a mommy mecca. And it didn?t stop there. In the nine months I was pregnant, I saw more expectant moms than I had in my entire life. Or at least I thought I did.
Turns out, my mind may have just been playing tricks on me. ?When something is on your mind, you start to notice it more than you did before,? says Nicholas Rule, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Social Perception and Cognition. ?You?re unconsciously looking for it and you hadn?t been before.?
This is known as the frequency illusion, or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, and it occurs through two psychological processes: selective attention and confirmation bias. Selective attention means you?re hyper-focused on baby-related matters and overlook everything else, so you take notice of other pregnant women but wouldn?t give an attractive individual a second glance. Confirmation bias leads you to assume that every sighting of an expectant mom i...