Déjà vu? Why we beloved repetition

All of life can be reduced to loops of repetition. Behavioural grooves that we return to, again and over again. Our jobs are loops, our social lives are loops, and the music nosotros like and the games we play all seem to revolve around repetition. We tell the aforementioned stories over and over once more. Even history seems to endlessly loop back around. Repetition is everywhere.

This need for routine and familiarity is deep-rooted in the recesses of the human brain. So why is repetition and so important to u.s.? In what ways – good and bad – does it affect u.s.? In I Think I've Been Here Before, writer Ross Sutherland explores the joy – and discomfort – that comes from repetition.

From a very immature age, repetition helps u.s.a. learn

"We learn through repetition," says Catherine Loveday, Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Westminster. "That's how we gear up anything in our minds. Whether it's a repeated thought; whether it'southward repeated action; whether information technology's practising playing football game or learning to drive a car." And at no point in our lives are nosotros more than malleable, more able to brand those connections and build those networks than in infancy. That's why young children are more than prone to repetition – they are at a stage of their life where they are learning. "From an evolutionary point of view, it's a very natural thing for infants to want to echo things over and over and over over again," says Catherine.

It's natural for infants to want to echo things over and over and over again.

Repetition can feel comfortable

We're creatures of habit. Repetition feels safe. Having the comfort of knowing what's coming next, and a familiar, regimented routine, can be really helpful and works for many people: "It's comfortable. They know what to expect. They're not having to bargain with lots of new situations and lots of new challenges," says Professor Loveday. "By definition, stress is a response to claiming." The fewer new things nosotros're facing every day, the less challenged we're going to feel. Through routine nosotros can reduce the size of the world to something manageable.

Merely some repetition is frowned upon

Repeating oneself is seen every bit embarrassing and flawed – we call out the robotic, repetitive language of diplomats, politicians and liars. We all know that our MPs need to set responses before speaking to the press, only if it's apparent that they're simply reading from a script – over and over – so they lose all their humanity. Nosotros attack them for being frauds. Comedian Glenn Moore explains how if a stand-up tries to repeat a spontaneous joke that worked beautifully the dark before, "the audition can normally just tell when it'southward not real" and it will fall apartment. Repetition tin expose u.s. equally inauthentic.

Repetition can also be subversive

Amongst the loops and repetitions in our lives in that location are patterns of behaviour that are compulsive and self-destructive. In these instances, repetition becomes a cage. Addicts will repeat the aforementioned action again and once again, even if the substance they are hooked on no longer makes them feel adept. Because if something fabricated u.s.a. feel good once, and so we have the tendency to do it over and over – long after it stops working. Repetition can make us experience trapped. Nosotros might want to break gratis but the momentum of the loop is just too not bad.

In the moving picture Groundhog Twenty-four hour period, the same day occurs over and over over again. Repetition can make us feel trapped. We might want to break gratis but the momentum of the loop is only besides swell.

Repetition breeds false memories

So many of usa define ourselves through stories from our past. But really, this element of our identity is incredibly fragile. Our memories experience real, but they are oft distorted. A repeated echo of an echo of an echo.

Barbara Tversky, Professor Emerita of Psychology at Stanford University, says subsequently the San Francisco earthquake of 1989, people would tell their ain stories of the event – and you lot would see them getting embellished, getting better, and adopting elements from other people'due south experiences. "We listen to stories or read them, we often class very brilliant images – just as brilliant every bit things that happen to united states – and later we can confuse them," says Professor Tversky. Nosotros tin manifest entirely false memories, simply through the procedure of repetition.

We crave repetition in music

Nosotros similar hearing something that we've heard earlier. Unproblematic, repeated sequences of beats in electronic music will brand a crowd go wild.

We like hearing something that we've heard before. Techno DJ and music producer "Hodge" explains how simple, repeated sequences of beats in electronic music will make a crowd go wild. "And minimalism is effective, not only with techno," says Hodge. Composer Philip Drinking glass uses the aforementioned principles: "Just going round and round with these amazing pianoforte riffs and motifs." The more we hear them, the more we like them. Drinking glass and Steve Reich are "masters of repetition," he says. In films too we love to hear the same riff coming back at dramatic moments. The shark theme in Jaws was fabricated up of merely 2 different notes, repeated over and over.

We fifty-fifty look for repetition when it's not there

Do you ever go the feeling that you've heard it all before? The feeling that you've lived through the present situation already? This is the strange phenomenon that nosotros call déjà vu – a French term which literally ways "already seen." Information technology's the eerie impression of familiarity or recollection which at the same time we know tin can't be true.

We don't actually know why we experience déjà vu. 1 theory is that there's a carve up-2d filibuster as our brain transfers data from one side to the other. It'southward our brain struggling to process multiple pieces of information, unable to align them correctly. Whatsoever the cause, the event is a sense that we're reliving a retentiveness, that isn't a memory at all.

Repetition is calming

When writer Ross Sutherland was a child he suffered from asthma. He was told that if he was ever struck down by an asthma attack, without his inhaler to mitt, to repeat a mantra: "It is passing, information technology is passing, information technology is passing." It's a mantra invented by psychologist Émile Coué at the turn of the last century, to assist those suffering from anxiety. "Ça passe", in the original French. Once inside the repetitive rhythm of the mantra, Ross would slowly experience the muscles in his breast relaxing.

With Coué'south phrase you go the condolement of repetition – of feeling the safety of a loop – whilst besides feeling a sense of constant forward motion. The psychologist is reminding us that fourth dimension is a river that flows onwards and a bicycle of repetition is never static. No matter how much we in indulge in repetition – even in this life of repetitive jobs and TV reruns – we just can't help only motility forwards.

  • Is deja vu a encephalon glitch, something triggered by the broader environment or a more mystical miracle?

    The Forum: Deja Vu