machado: science says bad things don't come in threes; they actually come in fours, fives
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we're comfortable counting negatives in threes because it gives us a sense of control during times when both feel hard to come by. getty
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“what comes next is all i ever think about” was the subject line of the email.
the note was from a woman who said that she lived in alberta, and that for more than a decade, she was the primary caregiver for her adult daughter who has a rare brain disease. she lamented about how stressful it all was — the endless appointments, the always-on advocating and anxiety about who would take care of her daughter if something happened to her. a heavy burden of intense worry over what awful thing would come next weighed on her always.
she described what the last month had been like, calling a burn on her arm from a hot iron, the discovery of an ant nest in her basement, and an eyebrow wax that pretty much left her without eyebrows, nothing much to worry about. the big things (she used a capital ‘b’) were a bum fridge that flooded her kitchen, emergency dental surgery from which the pain had not yet subsided and a coyote who had set up house in her backyard.
do bad things really come in threes?
she wanted to know if i believed that bad things came in threes, because if so, she wrote, she should be good for awhile. “right?” she asked.
eek. i could feel the stress in her words. i remember my mom and i having the same thoughts when my dad developed dementia. my mom worried endlessly about something happening to her and my dad being left without a caregiver and advocate.
the strings of awfulness and crises would come in waves. there were the falls and ambulances and choking episodes and emergency rooms and fevers and skin cancers that came upon us with a vengeance. all this in addition to our own “life” stuff — cars breaking down, children getting sick, and major house repairs. often it seemed like just as the overwhelm began to feel like too much, it would pass, only to come again later.
and like the woman from alberta, we also would count the things that made up the rough patches — it was hard not to. and though i don’t think either of us really believe that bad things came in threes, there was quiet solace when a third “bad” thing happened, because surely it was a sign that we couldn’t possibly sink any lower.
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i recently had a similar conversation with a friend whose three things seemed to begin with his beloved mother becoming seriously ill. second was his car being stolen, and finally, the falling of a massive tree in his backyard that crushed four nearby garages. certainly, there were lots of little things amid all of this as well, like a lost credit card, hassles with his insurance company and advocating for his mom in a system that is mostly hostile to caregivers. all of which, you could say, comfortably pushed him out of “bad-things-come-in-threes” territory into the “when it rains, it pours” category. still, his mom, the car and the tree top the bad-things-happen list, and for all concerned, it seems about time to confidently settle back for the upswing.
don’t waste time worrying about the third shoe to drop
the reality is, whether or not you are a firm myth-believer, or simply prefer to chirp platitudes like “bad things come in threes” unhelpfully when a friend is down in the dumps, according to scientists, any time spent stressing about the third thing that might be coming your way is a waste. bad things happen all the time, they say, way more than just three, and yet, we group them into threes. the reason why, interestingly, is threefold.
apophenia describes finding patterns in randomness
first of all, as humans, we have a tendency to see patterns and meaning in random information, according to masterclass. it’s called apophenia, first coined in 1958 by german psychologist and neuroscientist klaus conrad who was studying people in the early stages of schizophrenia. he defined it as the “unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness.” basically, grouping negative events into threes is comforting, it gives us a sense of control that the bad stuff won’t last forever — it’s like a coping strategy. apophenia also includes things like seeing faces in objects, like clouds or flowers (pareidolia) and believing that random numbers or patterns in gambling predicts a win (gambler’s fallacy).
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confirmation bias is the second reason we tend to see bad things in threes. it also sits under the umbrella of apophenia and happens when we accept only information that supports our beliefs and ignore any that disproves it. like the woman from alberta who only counted three things as bad — the broken fridge, dental surgery and the cosy coyote — confirmation bias had her downplaying the burn, ant nest and faulty eyebrow wax, even though those sound pretty significant too. if you do the math, for her, bad things come in sixes.
as a society, we like “threes”
but it doesn’t really matter, because no one is actually keeping accurate count, except maybe the universe. the truth is, as a society, we are simply more comfortable with threes, writes julian huguet in seeker. think religion (the father, son and the holy ghost), stories (the three little pigs), and entertainment (the three-act play), he points out. oooh, let me go on: three meals a day; three-day weekend; three dog night; past, present, future; three-alarm fire.
so if we’re more comfortable counting negatives in threes, if it gives us a sense of control during times when both feel hard to come by, and if there’s precious relief when the third shoe finally drops, then we should absolutely cap all the negatives in our lives at three. if only to take a breather, gather ourselves and cross our fingers that the universe is only counting on one hand.
lisa machado is the executive producer of healthing.ca.
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