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gambler's fallacy
You think the past forces a change in probability.
A 1971 study found that people expect a coin flip to balance out after a streak of heads, as if the coin has a memory.
The human mind struggles with true randomness, preferring patterns. We view independent events as linked, believing that the universe owes us a specific outcome to maintain equilibrium.
You see fate where there is only statistical independence.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Tversky and Kahneman, 1971
- What the check found
- Tversky and Kahneman's 1971 paper is the seminal text defining this cognitive error, describing exactly the phenomenon described in the claim.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.