Illusory correlation effect
Prejudice and social cognition
Hey all,
Welcome to Human Nature, the illustrated psychology newsletter.
This week we’re continuing to explore cognitive approaches to prejudice.
Today’s topic is the illusory correlation effect.
Illusory correlation effect
What it is: The illusory correlation effect refers to the phenomenon of seeing a relationship between two variables (usually a group and an attribute) where it doesn’t exist.
How it was discovered: The effect was first demonstrated by Hamilton and Gifford in 1976. They showed participants a series of sentences about positive and negative behaviours attributed to members of two groups. Group A (the majority group) was twice the size of Group B (the minority group), consisting of 24 and 12 members respectively. Both groups had the same proportion of positive and negative behaviours. Participants were then shown the list of behaviours again, but this time without the group member it was paired with, and were asked to state whether the behaviour belonged to someone from the Group A or the Group B. Participants consistently estimated that Group B, the minority group, had a higher proportion of members that engaged in negative behaviours than Group A. Therefore, participants perceived the minority group more negatively despite the fact that the majority group had the exact same proportion of negative behaviours.
Why it happens: The researchers attributed this error to the distinctiveness of the negative behaviours in the minority group. Rare and unusual occurences in a smaller group stand out more, therefore we are more likely to remember them. If you’ll remember from previous articles, because of the availability heuristic, we are more likely to believe information that more readily comes to mind to be true. Therefore it might be easier for participants to bring to mind the minority group’s transgressions because they were more distinct.
However, distinctiveness provides only a partial explanation for the illusory correlation. For instance, it has been found that the effect disappears when the minority group is one that the participant belongs to (Schaller & Maass, 1989). Therefore there seems to be motivational factors at play.
Thank you for reading, see you next time.
Sources:
It seems as if no matter how much progress is made on the path towards equality and tolerance, prejudice and discrimination stubbornly persist all across the world. However, in order to combat prejudice, we must first understand how it works. In this series of Human Nature, we explore the mechanisms behind prejudiced thinking and behaviour through the lens of social psychology.