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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jan 28, 2026

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Published on: March 1, 2017

Base-rate expectations modulate the causal illusion.

Fernando Blanco¹, Helena Matute¹

¹Departamento de Fundamentos y Métodos de la Psicología, Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao, Spain.

|March 6, 2019

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Prior expectations about outcome frequency influence causal illusions. People are less likely to see a cause-effect link when expecting frequent outcomes, and more likely when expecting rare outcomes.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Decision Science

Background:

Causal illusions occur when people perceive a causal relationship despite no actual contingency.
These illusions can be influenced by various cognitive biases.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the impact of prior base-rate expectations on causal illusions.
To determine if manipulating outcome base-rate expectations affects judgments of causality in null contingency settings.

Main Methods:

Two experiments were conducted involving pretraining participants on expected outcome base-rates (high or low).
Participants then completed a contingency task where the cause and outcome were not actually related.
Causal judgments were assessed after the contingency task.

Main Results:

Prior expectation of a high outcome base-rate reduced the causal illusion.
Prior expectation of a low outcome base-rate increased the causal illusion.
Findings suggest base-rate expectations significantly modulate causal judgments.

Conclusions:

Causal judgments are sensitive to pre-existing beliefs about outcome frequencies.
Results align with rational accounts of contingency learning emphasizing evidential value.
Understanding base-rate effects is crucial for explaining causal illusion formation.