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

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Decision Making
• Causal Inference

Background:

• Human causal judgments often deviate from objective evidence, leading to illusions of causality.
• Previous knowledge and expectations are hypothesized to contribute to these biased estimations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the role of prior knowledge-based expectations in the development of causal illusions.
• To determine how these expectations influence the assessment of cause-and-effect relationships.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted using non-contingent situations where participants judged causality.
• Experiment 1 involved participants deciding the presence or absence of a potential cause, influencing its occurrence probability.
• Experiment 2 removed participant control over the potential cause's occurrence, isolating probability effects.

Main Results:

• In Experiment 1, expectations influenced judgments, mediated by the probability of the potential cause (driven by participant responses).
• In Experiment 2, only the probability of the cause significantly affected judgments, not expectations or their interaction.
• These findings indicate that behavior mediates the impact of expectations on causal illusions.

Conclusions:

• Knowledge-based expectations shape causal illusions primarily through behavioral mediation.
• Behavioral choices bias information intake, leading to perceptions of causality congruent with pre-existing expectations.