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Damned if you do and damned if you don't, Steven.
I'm Angela Duckworth.
I'm Steven Dubner. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.
Today on the show, why are humans so fascinated by coincidences?
Are you my fifth grade English teacher?
Have you ever seen us in the same place?
The answer is no, coincidence?
I think not. Steven, we have a really interesting email by somebody named Selvie.
I'd like to read it to you.
Please do. Hi, Steven and Angela.
Hi, Selvie. Last night, my husband and I finally decided that we should start watching the new season of Succession.
Oh! You're a Succession fan, yes?
I am. I have not watched a second of Succession.
I'd recommend it. So after deciding this, Selvie writes, I announced I would clean up the kitchen and then we would sit down to watch.
Of course, while cleaning up, I needed to listen to an episode of my favorite podcast.
So I popped you guys on to entertain me while I cleaned.
How do you feel about that, Angie, being accompaniment to dishwashing?
Do you think that Selvie should be sitting at her desk and taking notes?
I was flattered. Lo and behold, Selvie writes, a mere five or so minutes into the podcast, you start to discuss Succession.
Oh my God. OMG. I was so surprised by this odd coincidence as if my decision to watch Succession had somehow caused you to discuss it on the podcast.
Obviously impossible and silly, but it made me wonder why we seem to think there is something so magical and special about coincidences.
As I understand it, coincidences are pretty commonplace.
For example, the birthday paradox says that in a room of 23 random people, there's a 50 % chance two people will have the same birthday, but it seems so crazy and special when that happens.
So what is it about our psychology that makes us so fascinated by coincidences despite the fact that they are relatively common and meaningless occurrences?
Interesting question.
I'm happy to hear her assert that we are quote, fascinated by coincidences.
I am very interested in them, but I had never thought about how universal that is.
Let me ask you this.
What is it called when, let's say, I decide to take up knitting and the next day I observe that my next door neighbor also knits, even though I'd never observed that before.
What is that called?
Oh, you know, like this is a personal example, but when I was trying to get pregnant, I swear to God, you just like walked down the street and it just seems that - Pregos everywhere.
It's just everywhere.
So it's an attentional bias.
I thought it went by the name, the red Honda bias.
Right. You buy a certain kind of car, then all of a sudden you notice, oh my gosh, look how many of these there are.
Yeah, like everyone else has my car.
And it's just that you are paying attention.
I mean, attention is where you're not just passively taking in information from your environment.
You're searching for images of pregnant women when you're not pregnant and you want to be, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
When I ask you what strikes you as a classic coincidence, what comes to mind?
Well, I think what we're getting at is two things that happen coincident in time.
You can't use the word to define the word.
Oh gosh, are you my fifth grade English teacher?
Yes, I am. You and Mrs.
Bryan actually don't look that dissimilar.
I'll just say that.
Have you ever seen us in the same place?
The answer is no, coincidence?
I think not. Okay, how about this?
A coincidence happens synchronously in time.
I beg to differ. Okay, here's one that does fit your definition.
Did you know that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on exactly the same day?
Oh, but not the same year.
The same day, same year.
And it was the 4th of July.
These are two political rivals, founding fathers.
Adams apparently said at the time Jefferson lives as he was going out, like he was so ticked off that he was gonna die first.
But Jefferson didn't live, died the same day.
Wow. But a lot of coincidences that I think people notice aren't happening synchronously, not at the same time.
Here's another, if we're sticking on American political figures, what about the famous Abraham Lincoln, John F.
Kennedy parallels? Well, I know enough about American history that these things could not have happened at the same time.
That is true. So two American presidents, both assassinated, but also Lincoln was elected in 1860.
Kennedy, 1960. I'm reading something here from historical notes, a compendium of curious coincidences from Time Magazine in 1964.
Both were deeply involved in the civil rights struggle.
The names of each contained seven letters.
Oh God. The wife of each president lost a son when she was first lady.
Both presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both were shot in the head from behind and in the presence of their wives.
Both presidential assassins were shot to death before they could be brought to trial.
The names of the assassins, John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, each contain 15 letters.
Lincoln and Kennedy were each succeeded by southerners named Johnson.
Okay, that is eerie.
I mean, each individual fact you can explain, you're like, oh, how many letters?
That's probably not an uncommon number of letters for names, Friday.
Maybe there's something about Fridays.
I don't know. You got a one out of seven chance anyway.
And that's true too.
That's the key of a lot of coincidences.
We're not very good at probabilities.
That's what the birthday surprise is about, right?
When Selby mentioned that you only need 23 random people in a room to have a 50 % chance that they'll share a birthday.
It's just math. A lot of times I think people do this math problem and they imagine themselves in the room and they imagine that there's 22 other people and they're like, okay, what's the probability that I have a birthday with you?
But that's not the right way to think about it.
Right, anybody could have a birthday with anyone else.
And I think that birthday problem actually sheds a little light on this because there are so many things that could go together, have the same number of letters, the same color.
So sometimes things that we think are coincidences, in fact, are not coincidences.
Right. Do you use Instagram, Facebook, et cetera?
I use Twitter. Okay, so let's say that you are at a neighbor's having a backyard barbecue and you're talking to another neighbor, someone that you're a little friendly with, and you're talking about some items, some product, and then five minutes later you check your phone and you get an ad served for that very
product. So what do you think in that case?
Oh, that has happened to me.
I was looking for these boots and then I was like, oh my gosh, these hats are coming up.
My search history was, I guess, instantaneously saved and then linked up to some algorithm.
And they knew I had my eye on the Stuart Weitzman 5050 black over the knee boots and served up an ad to me.
So that is one channel by which you will be served an ad.
And that would seem to be pretty explicable to most of us and understandable and maybe even desirable for some of us.
It didn't bother me, by the way.
I was like, algorithm the hell out of it, I don't care.
Right, because you know that it's something that you were interested in.
So the fact that Google knows that and serves you the idea, you kind of get that.
But no, that was not the case in the example I just gave you.
Let's say that you had not searched for a Stuart Weitzman boot on your phone.
Okay, so maybe I'm paying attention to ads and my eyes are drawn to the ad that I like, right?
That is, I'm sure, an acceptable answer as an explanation, but it's not the explanation I'm looking for.
Have you ever heard of people who are concerned that their mobile devices are listening to them?
Oh, I have heard of those people.
I'm definitely not one of those people.
You mean, for example, I am talking to my husband about Stuart Weitzman boots and then - And you've both got, let's say a smartphone, an iPhone or whatnot?
Yeah, like Siri or Alexa over here as it feeds that to an algorithm.
I had not thought about that.
And I still don't care about it.
Oh, really? I care that other people care, by the way.
I just personally don't care.
But that is theoretically possible and it may be happening, but that's apparently not what results in the phenomenon I'm describing either.
Oh, it's not that. Well, the firms will tell you that they are not allowed to do that and they don't do that.
That's at least what they say.
So here's what actually happens, at least according to the research that I've read, which is that you and she are standing next to someone at that party and they did search for Stuart Weitzman boots and you've now come into contact with them and you are geolocated and algorithmically, you are known
to be a person who, because you're friendly with that person who did search for Stuart Weitzman boots, they will now serve you an ad for those Stuart Weitzman.
Gosh, I feel like we're saying Stuart Weitzman boots so much, we should be paid for advertising for Stuart Weitzman boots.
We'll send them an invoice.
That would look to be maybe a coincidence that you saw the ad, whereas in fact it's not.
So it starts to get a little bit tricky.
How about this one?
I would not be at all surprised if you know this.
Who would you say are two of the most prominent experimental social psychologists of the 20th century?
Okay, Kurt Lewin. Who did the most famous social psychology experiments of the 20th century?
Festinger, Milgram.
Ding, ding, ding, Stanley Milgram.
Okay, tell us who Milgram was and what he did that was famous.
So Milgram was actually famous for experiments where basically in the experiment, the subject shocks somebody else who's actually a Confederate.
Delivers a fake shock.
Yeah, they're really about authority.
It was trying to explain how essentially Nazi Germany happened.
Like how do normal people do cruel things?
Right, so if you and you were the researcher and I come in as the research subject, you'd put me in a room with like a little panel where I have buttons and I'm told that I can deliver an electric shock to the person on the other side of that glass and you tell me to do it and I do it and I hear that person respond,
right? Yeah, you hear that person screaming.
You hear that person saying, no, please stop my heart, my heart.
And then the authority figure in some versions of the experiment wearing a white lab coat with a clipboard, like no, you must go on.
You must administer the next shock.
And what the stunning finding is, is that people that you recruit off the street who don't seem to be sadists or mentally unwell will in large numbers shock the guy practically to death.
We should emphasize the shocks were fake.
The people were not actually being hurt.
Right. Okay, so you've identified one.
I got one of the experimental social psychologists.
You did great. So what would you say is the most notorious social?
Zimbardo? Zimbardo.
So tell us who Philip Zimbardo is.
He's alive. Phil Zimbardo is a Stanford psychologist who in the basement of a building at Stanford recreated a prison.
And Zimbardo wanted to understand the effects of group conflict and conformity.
And he essentially wanted to see how different people could be when they are put into roles of authority.
I assume that these must have been undergraduates for the most part, but there were these research volunteers.
And you get randomly assigned to be a prisoner or a guard in this fake prison in the basement.
This is a pretty controversial experiment, not only in terms of the ethics, but also what actually happened or didn't happen and how we interpret it.
But the short story was that you can turn a normal, nice, kind, ethical person into a monster by putting them into a social role, for example, play the role of a prison warden.
And it was so grotesque and brutal that he had to shut down the experiment much earlier than planned.
Yes, but anyway, what is the point of the Milgram and Zimbardo pop quiz?
Well, can you tell me what Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo have in common aside from the fact that they conducted two of the most memorable and notorious social psychology experiments in history, really?
I've tried to count the letters in their names.
Phil Zimbardo, Stanley Milgram, I don't think it's a number of letters.
I don't know what. Would you believe if I told you that Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgram went to the same high school at the same time?
James Monroe High School in New York City.
Wow. There were also interestingly both fans of Alan Funt and the TV show Candid Camera.
But here's the real question.
Would you say that that's a coincidence or is it something other than a coincidence?
So they were boys of a certain generation, right?
Well, it's not just that.
It's about boys of a certain generation who were interested in a certain type of voyeurism or experimentation.
Oh, you're gonna read into it.
Candid Camera was so popular though, Stephen, come on.
You're right, but here's what I'm getting at.
First of all, what I want to know is who their high school science teachers were because it would seem to be noteworthy that two people who went on to do these things went to the same high school and I would want to know what inspired them to do so.
Did they take AP Psych?
Did AP exist in the 40s?
You want to hear another Stanley Milgram coincidence.
Yeah. Stanley Milgram was married at the Brotherhood Synagogue in Gramercy Park, neighborhood of Manhattan.
Guess who else got married at the Brotherhood Synagogue?
You? Me, and as an homage to Stanley Milgram, we pretended to deliver an electric shock to the rabbi during the ceremony.
That's adorable. That's not true.
Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Stephen and Angela discussed the Jungian idea of synchronicity.
Oh my gosh, we're meant to be together.
I'm also a Taurus. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Lululemon.
Everyone has those moments where they say, not today, when it comes to fitness.
Lululemon restorative gear is made for those days, days where you want to max out your rest, not your reps.
Lululemon's new campaign features OBJ and DK Metgaff in their buttery soft, breathable, restorative wear designed to keep up or kick back with you.
Visit Lululemon .com for everything you need to bring it tomorrow.
Rest day is the best day.
Before we return to Stephen and Angela's conversation about coincidence, let's hear some of your thoughts on the topic.
We asked listeners to share their perspectives on seemingly serendipitous moments.
Twitter user Joe Curia writes, when my dad moved to the U .S.
from Syria in the 70s, he first visited New York City.
Knowing nobody there, he stopped into an Arab shop to say hello.
They chatted a bit about where he was from and they asked if he knew someone named Abood.
He told them he had a longtime friend by that name.
They asked him to describe Abood and he did.
Then they said, famously, Abood is in the basement and he was.
My dad had found a hometown friend two continents away in one of the world's biggest cities totally by chance.
At Audrey Trace says, I absolutely find meaning in these moments.
They're a reminder that we all have something in common.
Coincidences can be a helpful perspective adjuster and a great talking point.
And finally, at Pcohelio underscore Rabbit writes, my name is Paulo, my wife is Paula, my dad's name is Manuel and so is hers.
Her mom's name is Armandina and so is mine.
What is the meaning of this coincidence?
Nothing whatsoever.
Thanks to everyone who shared their responses with us.
Next week's episode of the show is about emotional intelligence.
And we'd like to try something a little different.
If you'd like to share your thoughts on the subject, email a voice memo to NSQ at Freakonomics .com with the subject line emotional intelligence.
Let us know what the term means to you and how significant it is in your personal and professional relationships.
Make sure to record someplace quiet and please keep your thoughts to under a minute.
Maybe we'll include them on the show.
Now back to Stephen and Angela's conversation about the human fascination with coincidence.
I want to bring a word into this that I thought was just the title of a police song and album, but apparently is a word that predates the police.
Synchronicity. Synchronicity, yeah.
I think synchronicity was one of the only albums that I possessed in my youth.
And I won it in a bar mitzvah back to the synagogue thing.
Wow. It was like the limbo contest.
Coincidence of coincidences.
How synchronous is that?
Jung invented the phrase, right?
Yeah, Jung was a prominent psychiatrist.
He was in the psychoanalytic tradition, but I think it would be inaccurate to call him a follower of Freud.
He had this term synchronicity for events that would happen that were not causally related to each other.
So it wasn't that event A caused event B.
It wasn't that event B caused event A.
There's a third variable, and maybe there's something that we have no conscious perception of.
He had this pen pal correspondence with a very famous physicist at the time, and they were really talking about the nature of free will and the universe and connections between physics and psychology.
So anyway, this idea of synchronicity is that two events might be connected in some way, and one doesn't cause the other, and yet it's more than just chance.
And I think this had to do with this idea that he had that there could be forces at play that also might be behind ghosts and magic, dreams.
These are my words, not Jung's.
He had this idea of the collective unconscious.
That's supposed to be some like shared mind of all humans.
Which ties into his notion of archetypes, right?
So there was shared consciousness, but there were individual differences.
Yes, I wouldn't call Jung a great scientist in the way that we think of scientists today.
I mean, he wasn't data -driven.
He was a really interesting thinker.
To me, all of this points to the sort of overdeveloped causal machinery of the human mind.
We look for patterns.
Yeah, we see patterns unbidden.
It sounds like a pejorative.
It sounds like you're saying that's not a good use of our time and thinking and so on.
On the other hand, at the beginning of this conversation, you called attention to something that I thought was really interesting, which was the fact that noticing coincidences is an act of paying attention.
And so I would think that you would applaud the instinct at least to seek out patterns, even if the patterns turn out to be not that meaningful, because it means that you were paying attention in a particular way.
Yeah, and more than that, I do think that looking for patterns, I mean, is there a better definition of learning?
When children do things like turn their cereal bowl upside down to see what happens, they notice this coincidence, which is like, I see one event, which I turn the cereal bowl, and another event milk goes all over the floor.
They're looking for patterns.
Frankly, they're looking for causality.
And I think that causal machinery, which is the foundation of learning, is good.
And there are times that our machinery can get us into a little trouble, like, oh my gosh, we're meant to be together.
I'm also a Taurus. But I think, really, Jung was doing that.
I mean, for me to judge Jung, but like, come on, can't things just happen by chance?
Okay, but think about this.
If Jung had not done that, and had that kind of wooly thinking that you are now not applauding so much, there never would have been a police record called Synchronicity.
You never would have gotten it at that bar mitzvah.
And you loved that record, did you not?
I love that record.
So there is no harm necessarily in embracing a pursuit of synchronicity or coincidence?
I don't know that there's harm, but I guess you could make the argument that seeing patterns that aren't there could get you into trouble.
Conspiracy. Did you know, for instance, when they were building the Pentagon, the first date of construction was 9 -11?
Ooh, really? That is spooky.
Exactly. So I'm sure I could spin out from that a theory.
How about this one?
Ben Roethlisberger, the recently retired longtime quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
As a starting quarterback, he was undefeated in the first home game after the debut of a Spider -Man film.
Oh, God. I think there have been something like seven Spider -Man films.
Every time Ben Roethlisberger started a game at home after the debut of a Spider -Man film, he won.
So this was a big meme in sports betting circles recently.
Sounds causal. It sounds causal, right?
The Steelers are in the Super Bowl.
Quick, release a Spider -Man film.
That wouldn't work though, because you wouldn't play a Super Bowl at home.
But anyway, he won a lot of games, and he won a lot of games at home.
So the fact that he won a preponderance of them after the release of a Spider -Man film is actually not very noteworthy at all.
Did you know that ginseng roots, you know, my family's Chinese, the ginseng roots that look more like people, they're more expensive.
And like, whatever.
I guess it's in the category of benign causal inference.
I don't think there could possibly be any superior medicinal benefit from a root that grew under the ground.
