ELIZA effect

ELIZA effect: /*-li'z* *-fekt'/ n.  [AI community] The
   tendency of humans to attach associations to terms from prior
   experience.  For example, there is nothing magic about the symbol
   `+' that makes it well-suited to indicate addition; it's just
   that people associate it with addition.  Using `+' or `plus'
   to mean addition in a computer language is taking advantage of the
   ELIZA effect.

   This term comes from the famous ELIZA program by Joseph Weizenbaum,
   which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist by rephrasing many of
the
   patient's statements as questions and posing them to the patient.
   It worked by simple pattern recognition and substitution of key
   words into canned phrases.  It was so convincing, however, that
   there are many anecdotes about people becoming very emotionally
   caught up in dealing with ELIZA.  All this was due to people's
   tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer never put
   there.  The ELIZA effect is a {Good Thing} when writing a
   programming language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings
   when analyzing an Artificial Intelligence system.  Compare
   {ad-hockery}; see also {AI-complete}.