What is the word for the phenomenon of noticing something more
frequently after having another (possibly unrelated) experience with
it?  For example, say my wife and I are considering buying a red
Subaru and we suddenly seem to notice them everywhere?

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Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 16 Sep 2004 16:28 PDT

familiarization?

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Request for Question Clarification by denco-ga on 16 Sep 2004 16:42 PDT

Synchronicity?
Sensitized?

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Request for Question Clarification by denco-ga on 16 Sep 2004 16:42 PDT

Predisposition?

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Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 16 Sep 2004 19:30 PDT

I believe the experience you are referring to is called
"hyperconscious". This occurs when one becomes extremely or acutely
aware. In this instances you seem to have become accutely aware of
this particular car and though you are probably not seeing the car
more often, you are much more aware of it when it happens.

INFO PLEASE
http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0483562.html


DICTIONARY.COM
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?db=*&q=Hyperconscious

Let me know if this word serves to describe what you are experiencing.

tutuzdad-ga

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Clarification of Question by kaosgoo-ga on 17 Sep 2004 07:49 PDT

I don't think any of these is the word.  I think I heard about it in a
"Psychology & Law" class where we talked about witnesses and bias. 
The same type of idea/word explains why we think plane crashes have
increased even though they haven't (we've just had more dramatic
experiences with them thanks to more news coverage).

I vote for Denco's suggestion: "Synchronicity," which is often defined
as "meaningful coincidence."

I am leaning (self servingly, but still) to "sensitized" which is defined as:

"To make sensitive: 'The polarity principle... sensitizes the observer to the
coexistence of seemingly contradictory phenomena'"

Hmmm.  I notice that all comments so far are from researchers.  Well,
I'm not a researcher, but I am a professional word wielder, so perhaps
that gives me some credibility as an objective commenter.

In my opinion, the word you want is "sensitized."  You've become
sensitized to a particular phenomenon and so it registers in your
awareness and you have the experience of "seeing them everywhere" when
there's been no change in the frequency of the stimulus, just in the
filtering of your perceptions.

Archae0pteryx

I have seen the term "constructed perception" used in cases where an
individual's expectations color his observations, as when a person
believes that crime in his area is on the increase when, in fact,
statistics indicate the opposite. In such cases, widespread media
coverage of certain kinds of crimes may have led to a false conclusion
by the observer.

The example of noticing red Subarus everywhere sounds like pareidolia:

"pareidolia (payr.eye.DOH.lee.uh) n. The erroneous or fanciful
perception of a pattern or meaning in something that is actually
ambiguous or random."

http://www.wordspy.com/words/pareidolia.asp

Hi Kaosgoo,

This is my favourite subject, as it occurs often, beyond what I could
call coincidence. My first reaction (before reading the replies) was
"Synchronicity" (Carl Jung) as Denco first described.

Our learned friends here are on the money. Would you guys be
interested in discussing the topic further? My "synchs" usually appear
as number patterns standing out, without even looking for paralells.
No rhyme nor reason, it just happens .. noticeably.

In thought, Silver

Another relatied concept: apophenia.

"Apophenia is the spontaneous perception of connections and
meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena."

http://skepdic.com/apophenia.html

I apologize for the typo in my post above. For 'relatied,' please read 'related.'

Guess I just got too excitied while typiing. ;=)

"...synchronicity actually refers to a theory by Carl Jung that such
coincidences actually have meaningful connections.

People do have a tendency to perceive order in chaos. It?s what makes
us see horses in clouds, or people in mountainsides, or faces on Mars.
It?s why faces on cartoon cars make more sense than faces on walls,
and it?s almost certainly a factor in the popularity of numerology. I
found the technical terms for this. Apophenia, or Type I error refers
to seeing connections where there are none. Pareidolia refers to
seeing something vague, but perceiving it as if it were something
clear."

http://www.hyperborea.org/journal/archives/2004/07/12/speaking-of-synchronicity/

Hi Kaosgoo and all,

OK I can't resist. I need to be clear. I am a cynic. I don't go
looking for coincidence. It just arrives. It may mean nothing, it may
be just what it is, full stop. God knows. Two examples.

1/ My step-niece had the exact same telephone number as I, plus one
digit about the middle of the number. She lived 300km from me at the
time. No more to tell. But .. if we tried to coincide the numbers,
what would the odds be? The difficulty with this type of coincidence
is the nothingness. It just is. It can't be used as a tool for
betterment. It just is what it is.


2/ A truck passes across me at the traffic lights. Black on white
lettering business name is similar to a primary school colleague's
name, whom I detested and fought. For the first time in my life I
chose to have have good thoughts about this person. I do not buy the
local newspaper daily. 3 days later I buy the local and read his name
in the Death column. I had not seen this kid for 35 years. He left
behind a wife and kids. Donations to the Leukaemia Foundation were
suggested, in lieu of flowers.

Was it just a Lotto result, or somehow meant to be?

Phil

A couple of years ago, I bought a car from a friend who had several
car dealerships many miles away.

I agreed to buy the car on the spec and his recommendation and when I
picked it up I thought that it was reasonably rare because only a few
had been imported.

But then I spotted another and another ...

Of course, not knowing what the car looked like I had no idea that
there were others around.

The word for this?

Stupidity.

it's a good example of a: "conditioned stimulus"

(http://allpsych.com/dictionary/dictionary1.html)
Conditioned Stimulus:    The stimulus in a stimulus-response chain
that is not naturally occurring, but rather has been learned through
its pairing with a naturally occurring chain.

(http://www3.azwestern.edu/psy/dgershaw/PsychNotes2.html)
Conditioned stimulus (CS): develops from a neutral stimulus (NS) via learning.

Red Subarus were a neutral stimulus to you until you started learning
about them for the purpose of buying one.

Hey Bryan,

No .. your word is NOT stupid at all. The word in your case was a phrase ..

Your trust misinformed.

Phil

I'd propose "heightened awareness," or even "identification," in the
sense that you're "identifying" with cars that are identical to yours