Illusion of external agency
Origin: Gilbert et al., 2000
Biological Parallel
When ants encounter pheromone trails leading to food, they assume intentional guidance from colony-mates (external agency). The truth: trails emerge from decentralized foraging accidents amplified by positive feedback—no individual ant knows the route beforehand. The illusion is adaptive because following trails works whether agency exists or not. The bias becomes costly when extended to non-social domains: prey animals that over-attribute 'strategy' to random predator movements freeze unnecessarily, wasting time. Humans inherited hyper-active agency detection from ancestral environments where social threats dominated; we now see 'manipulation' in random market movements and 'strategy' in chaotic organizational outcomes.