{"pk":27969,"title":"Illusory causation and outcome density effects with a continuous and variable outcome","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Illusory causation is a consistent error in human learning inwhich people perceive two unrelated events as being causallyrelated. Causal illusions are greatly increased when the targetoutcome occurs frequently rather than rarely, a characteristicknown as the outcome density bias. Unlike most experimentaldesigns using binary outcomes, real-world problems to whichillusory causation is most applicable (e.g. beliefs aboutineffective health therapies) involve continuous and variableconsequences that are not readily classifiable as the presenceor absence of a salient event. This study used a causallearning task framed as a medical trial to investigate whetheroutcome density effects emerged when using a continuousand variable outcome that appeared on every trial.Experiment 1 compared the effects of using fixed outcomevalues (i.e. consistent low and high magnitudes) versusvariable outcome values (i.e. low and high magnitudesvarying around two means in a bimodal distribution).Experiment 2 compared positively skewed (low density) andnegatively skewed (high density) continuous distributions.These conditions yielded comparable outcome density effects,providing empirical support for the relevance of the outcomedensity bias to real-world situations in which outcomes arenot binary but occur to differing degrees.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"illusory causation; outcome density; casual learning; contingency learning"}],"section":"Publication-based-Talks","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3bq4b6pq","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Julie","middle_name":"Y.L.","last_name":"Chow","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Sydney","department":""},{"first_name":"Hilary","middle_name":"J","last_name":"Don","name_suffix":"","institution":"U of Sydney","department":""},{"first_name":"Ben","middle_name":"","last_name":"Colagiuri","name_suffix":"","institution":"U of Sydney","department":""},{"first_name":"Evan","middle_name":"J","last_name":"Livesey","name_suffix":"","institution":"U of Sydney","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2018-01-01T13:00:00-05:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27969/galley/17607/download/"}]}