The Experience of Coincidence: An Integrated Psychological and Neurocognitive Perspective

Abstract

In this chapter, we focus on psychological and brain perspectives on the experience of coincidence. We first introduce the topic of the experience of coincidence in general. In the second section, we outline several psychological mechanisms that underlie the experience of coincidence in humans, such as cognitive biases, the role of context and the role of individual differences. In the third and final section we formulate the phenomenon of coincidence in the light of the unifying brain account of predictive coding, while arguing that the notion of coincidence provides a wonderful example of a construct that connects the Bayesian brain to folk psychology and philosophy. PreludeThis book concentrates on the topic of coincidence. In this chapter, we focus on psychological and brain perspectives on the phenomenon of coincidence. Humans frequently experiences coincidences in life in the sense of the Oxford dictionary: A remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection. To shed light on this issue, we will first introduce the topic of coincidence in general. In the second section, we outline several psychological attri-

Experimental Manipulations of Personal Control do Not Increase Illusory Pattern Perception

“…A common denominator of these different measures is the tendency to perceive illusory patterns in random noise or between unrelated events (van Elk, Bekkering, & Friston, 2015). For instance, many conspiracy beliefs are characterized by the idea that unexplained and seemingly random details of a major event (e.g., the time it took the ambulance to take Princess Diana to the hospital) must have a cause at deeper level (e.g., the ambulance was intentionally delayed because of a conspiracy by the secret service; cf.…”

Seeking the supernatural: the Interactive Religious Experience Model

“…Several studies have investigated how individual differences in religiosity relate to agency detection and mentalizing biases. Studies show, for example, that paranormal believers compared to skeptics have a strong tendency to report seeing meaningful patterns in random noise (Blackmore & Moore, 1994), display a bias toward detecting faces in objects (Riekki, Lindeman, & Raij, 2014), and show a bias for illusory agency detection (e.g., seeing more intentionality in randomly moving figures or dots; van Elk, 2013van Elk, , 2015b. 9 These studies, however, leave it unclear whether agency detection is a cause or a consequence of religious and paranormal beliefs (or both result from some deeper underlying tendency).…”

“…Others have shown that humans have a pervasive and developmentally early-emerging tendency for teleological thinking (Kelemen, 2004), and a stronger tendency for teleological thinking is in turn related to increased religiosity (e.g., Heywood & Bering, 2014). Another profound bias that has been associated with supernatural beliefs is the "experience of meaningful coincidence," whereby a seemingly random event is attributed special significance (e.g., reading a passage in the Bible that really stands out and that is interpreted as a personal message from God; van Elk, Friston, & Bekkering, 2016). These and other socio-cognitive biases have at least similar explanatory potential to agency-detection biases, when it comes to supernatural beliefs.…”

“…One's sense of teleology (Kelemen, 2004) in a sequence of eventswhether that sense is accurate or notcan ground a personal belief that supernatural forces are at work in my life. And it is a well-known practice among evangelical Christians to flip open a page of the Bible at random and interpret that passage as being relevant to an issue in one's own life; when the passage seems particularly pertinent, this triggers an experience of meaningful coincidence that can be construed as God speaking to me here now (van Elk, Friston, et al, 2016). In each case, a low-level signal that carries self-attached information of some sort is interpreted in light of general beliefs in order to arrive at a personal belief.…”

The development of the illusion of control and sense of agency in 7- to-12-year old children and adults

“…We will argue that the illusion of control is strongly related to a process of reinforcement learning and the detection of illusory contingencies (for review, see: van Elk, Friston, & Bekkering, 2015). In contrast, sense of agency is primarily related to a predictive process, in which the anticipated outcomes of one's actions are compared with the observed sensory consequences.…”