The Daily Decision-28-Illusory correlation

Hello Hello This is Dr. Z, Zachary Brooks, with The Daily Decision

because you want to make better decisions.

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Today is the TWENTY-EIGHTH episode of The Daily Decision

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Quick. What do you think when you hear “causation?” If you’re like me, you think “correlation does not equal causation.” If your friend is late to work, is it because of traffic or because her alarm didn’t make noise? Even if one thing is true, maybe going to bed is the cause of arriving late to work.

Or it could be something else. Correlation captures the relationship, strong or weak, between two variables let’s say oversleeping and arrival time at work.

But making the jump from two things have a relationship to one thing causing an another is one of the enduring and reoccurring biases we humans have. We want to solve problems … quickly so we put 2 and 2 together but that often means we are simply putting the easiest things together or putting 2 things together that don’t have a strong relationship, like Facebook friends.

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As always, Happy Deciding.

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