Positive and negative implications of the causal illusion

The human cognitive system is fine-tuned to detect patterns in the environment with the aim of predicting important outcomes and, eventually, to optimize behavior. Built under the logic of the least-costly mistake, this system has evolved biases to not overlook any meaningful pattern, even if this means that some false alarms will occur, as in the case of when we detect a causal link between two events that are actually unrelated (i.e., a causal illusion). In this review, we examine the positive and negative implications of causal illusions, emphasizing emotional aspects (i.e., causal illusions are negatively associated with negative mood and depression) and practical, health-related issues (i.e., causal illusions might underlie pseudoscientific beliefs, leading to dangerous decisions). Finally, we describe several ways to obtain control over causal illusions, so that we could be able to produce them when they are beneficial and avoid them when they are harmful.