Previous knowledge can induce an illusion of causality through actively biasing behavior

Abstract

It is generally assumed that the way people assess the relationship between a cause and an outcome is closely related to the actual evidence existing about the co-occurrence of these events. However, people's estimations are often biased, and this usually translates into illusions of causality. Some have suggested that such illusions could be the result of previous knowledge-based expectations. In the present research we explored the role that previous knowledge has in the development of illusions of causality. We propose that previous knowledge influences the assessment of causality by influencing the decisions about responding or not (i.e., presence or absence of the potential cause), which biases the information people are exposed to, and this in turn produces illusions congruent with such biased information. In a non-contingent situation in which participants decided whether the potential cause was present or absent (Experiment 1), the influence of expectations on participants' judgments was mediated by the probability of occurrence of the potential cause (determined by participants' responses). However, in an identical situation, except that the participants were not allowed to decide the occurrence of the potential cause (Experiment 2), only the probability of the cause was significant, not the expectations or the interaction. Together, these results support our hypothesis that knowledge-based expectations affect the development of causal illusions by the mediation of behavior, which biases the information received.

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