Beyond UX Design · 2026-06-09 · 16 min
Your brain is wired to find patterns. That's mostly a good thing... until it's not. This episode breaks down illusory correlation: why your team sees connections that aren't there, and what you can do to stop making decisions based on a handful of vivid moments dressed up as a trend. Have you ever watched your team make a confident product decision based on a pattern that, when you actually look at the data, barely exists? Illusory correlation is the bias that turns coincidence into conviction. When two things happen close together - even just once or twice - our brains quietly file them as connected. The concept was first identified by psychologist Loren J. Chapman in 1967, who noticed that trained clinical professionals were reporting patient behavior patterns that statistically didn't exist. The problem isn't laziness or bad intent. It's just how human memory works. Rare or distinctive events get stored differently, and when two unusual things co-occur, the brain treats that pairing as meaningful - even when it's pure chance. In product and design work, this plays out constantly and in ways that feel completely legitimate.
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