ArticleFrontiers in psychology2018
Causal Illusions in the Service of Political Attitudes in Spain and the United Kingdom.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Associative Learning in a Conspiratorial Frame.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2026Article
- Presentation format influences the strength of causal illusions.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- The tendency to stop collecting information is linked to illusions of causality.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Article
- Causal Illusions in the Service of Political Attitudes in Spain and the United Kingdom.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
The causal illusion is a cognitive bias that results in the perception of causality where there is no supporting evidence. We show that people selectively exhibit the bias, especially in those situations where it favors their current worldview as revealed by their political orientation. In our two experiments (one conducted in Spain and one conducted in the United Kingdom), participants who self-positioned themselves on the ideological left formed the illusion that a left-wing ruling party was more successful in improving city indicators than a right-wing party, while participants on the ideological right tended to show the opposite pattern. In sum, despite the fact that the same information was presented to all participants, people developed the causal illusion bias selectively, providing very different interpretations that aligned with their previous attitudes. This result occurs in situations where participants inspect the relationship between the government's actions and positive outcomes (improving city indicators) but not when the outcomes are negative (worsening city indicators).
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