Lincoln Kennedy Patternicity Research Paper

A significant reason we so easily believe in myths is because of our brain’s predisposition to make things simpler. Our hectic lives distract us from distinguishing what is meaningful and what is not. This allows our minds to “trick” us into thinking something with absolutely no meaning at all has all of the meaning in the world. This is called patternicity and most likely comes from an evolutionarily, adaptive tendency. An example would be if someone was to eat a specific food and then get sick soon after. They would relate the sickness to that food and avoid it for some time. It doesn’t matter if the food was the actual cause of sickness or if it was just a coincidence. This comes from Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning and is called stimulus generalization.

Patternicity can also be seen in ESP claims.

Suppose someone is thinking of a friend that they haven’t talk to in a while and immediately after, that friend calls on the phone. A more logical explanation would be the rules of probability. Think of all the times that friend was on her mind in a month, with probability, it is likely that the friend would call sometime when she was thinking of her. Confirmation bias is another reason why we so easily believe myths. We often forget to consider information that would rule out our hypothesis. This can be seen in the Lincoln Kennedy conspiracy. There are numerous similarities in both President’s deaths, but there are also differences that are nearly never considered. Some of these are that President Lincoln was a Republican, had a beard, and was killed in Washington, D.C, whereas President Kennedy was a Democrat, did not have a beard, and was killed in Dallas, Texas. Myths are believed so easily because we want to believe them. Believing in them give is control over uncontrollable

situations. Myth are also easily believed because of the terror management theory. This theory states that reminders of our death can lead us to adopt comforting would views. An example is with the paranormal. Believing in life after death gives us purpose beyond our short lived lives on earth. Although this theory doesn’t disprove pseudoscience, it suggests that we are likely to believe in the paranormal regardless of their correctness.