QI | What's The IKEA Effect? 

One frequency effect I've noticed is if you own a car of a certain make or model you will see one everywhere everytime you go somewhere.

"I'm fierce fond of a decent bowel movement" There is something beautiful about that statement

IKEA effect: there was a US home baking product Mary Baker Cake Mix. You took the powder, added water, mixed it and baked a cake. It was a flop. Market research revealed that customers did not think it was "really baking a cake". They removed the dried egg from the ingredients and relaunched it as "Mary Baker - just add an egg cake mix" - roaring success. Those struggles with the Allen key mean something!

I'm immediately adopting the phrase "fierce fond"!

Sarah's joke about babies is so good!

"Red light in the sky, Shepherd's pie" Stephen must've been famished !

I thought the Ikea Effect was that feeling you get when you've finished the job, and you can see there are extra bits that you missed... but for the life of you, you can't figure out where they go. So you just.. risk it, and watch - teetering on the edge of terror - as your wife puts a big book on the shelf.

"Financial success improves medical outcome." I'm in the United States, and I see only truth here.

Earlier today, I saw an Instagram post from Depths of Wikipedia about the Frequency Illusion, and now, later the same day, I've just watched this video which talks about the Frequency Illusion. How weird is that?

The Frequencies Illusion sounds like a great name for a progresssive rock band.

Is that the only QI video where Alan doesnt say a single word?

I love how I always think I’ve seen all of the Qi episodes yet there is still odd clips I haven’t seen or remembered

The transition at the end of this video makes it look like there was a tear in time and space that's causing us to see a version of QI from an alternate timeline where Sandi Toksvig was always the host.

the frequency effect with me as a teenager was reading the (new) word schadenfreude and then seeing it in several other newspaper articles afterwards. My takes on it was these other columnists had read the same thing I had and were trying to pass themselves off as clever

The frequency effect is a form of confirmation bias. It's extremely powerful because our brains are keyed to look for patterns and not so much for the absence of patterns.

I loved that this QI video had subtitles / closed captions whereas for some inexplicable reason so many of QI's videos don't have closed captions and even block the auto captions. Good to see this one!

Another good way to explain the frequency illusion, is having just purchased a new-to-you vehicle, and then taking notice other vehicles of similar make/model/color on the road more often, even though the frequency of having actually seen those other vehicles is unchanged.

Today I learned that I'm just a walking IKEA effect.

‘im fierce fond of a decent bowel movement’ is easily my favourite line on tv.

Sarah lmao ^^ Now I've gotta watch this whole ep!

I had an instance of the frequency illusion just now, as a friend told me about the IKEA effect yesterday while we were putting together IKEA furniture.

The new outro is brilliant! Good job guys 😊

Did anybody else start seeing the number 42 pop up more frequently after reading hhgttg? Seems to be another effect of the Frequency Illusion.

the rhymes are usually pretty vague though, so it's easier to interpret them how you want. like you could take "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" as "eating healthy things can keep you healthy" which is true. "wealth makes health" could be saying "you have better access to medical care, you have better access to a healthy lifestyle in general" etc.

points mean prizes is alliterative though. there might be a similar effect for that

I usually hear of the Frequency Illusion referred to as a form of "Synchronicity"

Steven has the silky tones make my heart sing 😁

The Frequency Illusion is also known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

The example of frequency illusion that pops out to me is noticing a model of car more often after you own that model.

I experienced the frequency effect when I learned what a killdeer call sounds like. Started hearing them all the time afterwards.

I definitely have experienced the IKEA effect, in that I’ve realised I’ve become fond of something I own that I’m pretty sure I was indifferent to before. I wonder if this also explains the whole feud between gamers and which console is the “best”.

Sarah's remark about babies is something I wholeheartedly endorse.

Reading with the radio on in the background its surprising how often you will read a word just as somebody says the same word on the radio.

I heard “Welsh makes health”

These re-uploads are causing the deja vu effect.

The IKEA effect is me when cooking. Everyone says what I make is disgusting, but I can confidently say "This is the best mayonnaise sandwich I've ever had!"

Have a drinking game where you have a shot every time Josh touches his own face. 😂

I thought the IKEA Effect was "If you build it, they will come... apart."

I remember the first time (at least to my memory) hearing Fleetwood Mac's Go your own way and then hearing it purely coincidentally maybe 5 times in the next week. Made me wonder if I had heard it lots of times before without noticing

Yesterday on TV I saw the story bout a pane crash in 1957 which I had never herd of. Two hours later I saw a clip about it on RU-vid. Frequency illusion indeed!

And this is why I love QI so much!

A decent bowl movement after waking up can really brighten your day.

mate was talking about a (python?) skit involving a library/bookseller and mentioned the book name: "Ethel the aardvark goes quantity surveying" to which(as we were walking by)the people on the radio mentioned "Ethel the aardvark goes quantity surveying" and promptly freaked us out.

Grass and beer you're in the clear. Beer and grass you're on your arse. Smoking weed after beer will make you spew but the reverse order you're fine.

Tommy is hilarious 🤣🤣🤣

QI a day, I am here to stay.

Last time I heard the song "memory" must've been several years ago. Minus of course when I recently discovered the Cats musical and then three weeks later it played on the radio in the car. My best guess is memory has had a resurgence recently but of course I've not heard it since I've not been in cars much.

I saw this video right after seeing a news article about someone leaving social distancing arrows in an IKEA carpark to confuse people. Talk about the frequency illusion...

I can't believe that Ode to a Nightingale has come up twice in my life today.

I experienced the Frequency Illusion recently. We were buying a car and came across this beautiful blue one that I instantly took a shining to. We didn't buy it, but now I see blue cars everywhere.

1:35 That expression of, "This conversation just got seriously weird."

My wife's ancestry includes people from Wales -- she's gone so far as to start to learn Welsh -- and now it seems every couple of weeks or so I come upon a reference to Wales or the Welsh language. Perhaps ten years ago, I didn't even know it was a country, like Scotland or Ireland. Now it's everywhere I look. Bog swimmers. Singing competitions. Catherine Zeta-Jones.

is it when the construction of something becomes more complicated and harder to understand when actually looking at the directions?

The weirdest frequency illusion for me is learner drivers, I barely see them when I’m out but as soon as I’m in one of my lessons, I see them everywhere

Frequency Effect is strong with The Simpsons. At school I'd be thinking about an episode or part of an episode and it would pop up on the TV a day or two later. It still happens when I watch old episodes.

Actually Johnny Cochran allegedly borrowed that defense from an older case against two Italian immigrant anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti. Allegedly a man’s hat was found at the scene which didn’t fit either defendant. Since hats at the time were bespoke, the defense argued that someone else must have been present and therefore neither Sacco nor Vanzetti could be convicted since the presence of the hat introduced reasonable doubt. The hat did’t fit, they must acquit. (They were not acquitted. They were put to death by electrocution.)

The frequency illusion doesn't always work. For example, I've never seen "lant" again. I believe it's a process for flavoring/fermenting beer using urine (thanks SMBC Comics!)

The frequency thing is also known as the Baader-Meinhoff effect

Thanks

The Frequency Illusion is also known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

Red sky at night, shepherd’s pie 🤣

Yesterday I heard someone talking about the Baader-Meinhof-Phenomenon. Of course, I knew what the Baader-Meinhof-Komplex was(RAF =!uk airforce), but that was the day I first heard about the frequency illusion. Today is the second day I hear about the frequency illusion.

I have disproved the 'beer then wine, feeling fine' rhyme on many occasions.

"You can tell a lie, If it rhymes, or is featured on Q.I." There's another one

I'm not usually a fan of the lady comedian but she was really good in this segment.

The greatest or one of the greatest frequency illusions must be "I before E except after C." Which as your English teacher will tell you , just isn't true. In fact it may be this very edition of our favourite show where Stephen Fry mentions exactly that saying.

At least "you have to be in it to win it" is true, something that can't be said for all. You have to participate to win, but you don't have to hurt after exercise for it to be effective.

To be fair - wealth and health are both much broader terms than financial success and medical outcome. "Being wealthy leads to better health overall" probably would have gotten a lot more approval even though it doesn't rhyme

The best frequency illusion is when you buy a new car, all of a sudden you notice them everywhere

I love certain home made family dishes, (which I am absolutely capable of putting together exactly the same precise recipe… but it Sincerely TASTES Better to me because rhet webtbyo the trouble to make it for me/us. We remark on this that the Secret Ingredient is Love and maybe like a Placebo effect in a blind taste test I could not always know which was mine. Still, it touches my heart and goes to my head and I enjoy it so much more. Anyone else just Adore something your Mom, Auntie, Gran or friend makes more than if you brought it?

I think it's not the authority that makes people agree with it, like Stephen says, rather I think it's because it sounds so simple it alludes to a simple truth. "Wealth creates health" is so simple that you immediately know what it's trying to say and doesn't trigger any extra thoughts. Whereas saying the equivalent phrase Stephen used invites you to actually ponder what it means. And that means you are also going to think of counter-arguments.

One way to beat the frequency illusion is to actually keep a tally of what you keep seeing. And I find it works both ways. When someone doesn't want to see something, even when they encounter it regularly, they will dismiss it as a rare event. Even if it happens multiple times in a week for months on end. To them it will still be a 'rare event'. This I discovered when having to travel daily from one town to the next for most of a year. There was a section of the highway that went back and forth between two lane and four lane. And there were people traveling back and forth on it, slowing down and intentionally causing back ups in the two lane part, then speeding up to stay in front in the four lane, to slow up again when it went back to two lanes. Another person I knew who took the same trip on the same schedule thought it only happened every once in a while. I kept a dairy of it for about 3 months, and it happened on average about 4 out of 5 days. To the other guy, who I saw several times caught in the same traffic as me, "it only occasionally happened".

I have a theory about trivia nights/pub quiz. If I don’t know the answer to a question or don’t know the name of a song etc, I will see it or hear it within a week afterwards.

1:53 I am always drunk when I hear them

"Rhyme as Reason" is basically how everything functions in the US, from every day social situations all the way up to the legislature...

There is something wrong with my ikea effect. I definitely KNOW that "my" ikea is NOT the best, as the outcome invariably is a bit crooked and a few screws are lose.

The 'Rhyme Is Reason' principle, based on the popular scientific thesis by Dr's Dre & Seuss.

Beer before liquor, never sicker, Liquor before beer, always clear. Taught when I was young.

I heard Welsh means health and had to go back and listen again. That's the cloth-eared effect.

Look what daddy made, priceless.

The frequency "illusion" is to save memory. It's significantly cheaper to just replicate the same asset/script multiple times than loading in a new one each time. Oh, just so we're on the same page, reality is a simulation. But of course, you already knew that, due to it being the only plausible explanation to the information paradox.

You gotta risk it for the biscuit.

That dude with the bowel movement has inspired Randy Marsh.

3:41 red sky in the morning your garden shed is on fire

I always watch absolutely the entire video, to hear Sandi yell at me to choose something.

I managed to leave Ikea last year.

Sarah,you are right

The reason people agreed with the rhyming version is they thought it must be a known phrase and that makes them agree, "if its a phrase it must be true, people must say it" etc. Not wanting to go against what they thought was an agreed statement.

1:39 Beer before grass you're on your arse, grass before beer your in the clear.

Is the frequency effect similar to how you never notice that you are breathing until you pay attention to it

Sometimes you know it really isn't just an illusion. Like, you hear a term you have never once heard, and then you look it up, and then the very day somebody else uses it. It's one thing when you've heard it a bunch and just never thought to look it up before, but it's really weird when you've definitely just heard it for the first time. The weirdest to me was that, for a year after the 9/11 attacks, I saw 9:11 on digital clocks *constantly* ... I figured it had to be this effect, so I picked 5 other times I knew I could easily remember and would definitely notice if I saw them, and started counting the occurrences. I saw 9:11 about as much as the other 5 put together. And then almost exactly a year later, around Sept 11, 2002, the frequency dropped to where I would see all of them about the same amount of times.

1:53 Liquor before beer, never fear; beer before liquor, never sicker.

I thought the IKEA effect was when you go to anyone's house, you feel at home, because everyone you know also has a bunch of IKEA furniture, and a similar taste. Forks are exactly the same, that table is what you have at home, that bookshelve, oooh nice choice on where to put the drawer module!

"Wealth makes health" is not equivalent to "financial success improves medical outcomes" as the latter implies that wealth was some direct correlation to the results of medical procedures rather than a persons overall well-being. Perhaps simply saying that "Being healthy is easier for the financially successful" would be more apt.

Johnny Cochran came to my mind seconds before he brought it up.

I always thought that the Frequency Illusion was Synchronicity. Now I know.

@0:54 I wonder how much IKEA pay for that advertising 😂👌😜

Is there an opposite to the IKEA affect? Like where if you made it it doesn't taste as good

Sounds like option 3 is actually the Baader-Meinhof Effect..

If your Ikea bookcase falls down you only have your shelf to blame.