Unidirectional rating scales overestimate the illusory causation phenomenon.

ABSTRACT: Illusory causation is a phenomenon in which people mistakenly perceive a causal relationship between a cue and outcome even though the contingency between them is actually zero. Illusory causation studies typically use a unidirectional causal rating scale, where one endpoint refers to no relationship and the other to a strongly positive causal relationship. This procedure may bias mean causal ratings in a positive direction, either by censoring negative ratings or by discouraging participants from giving the normative rating of zero which is at the bottom extreme of the scale. To test this possibility, we ran two experiments that directly compared the magnitude of causal illusions when assessed with a unidirectional (zero-positive) versus a bidirectional (negative-zero-positive) rating sca

SUBMITTER: Ng DW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10880420 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature