Implementation and Assessment of an Intervention to Debias Adolescents against Causal Illusions

Abstract

Researchers have warned that causal illusions are at the root of many superstitious beliefs and fuel many people’s faith in pseudoscience, thus generating significant suffering in modern society. Therefore, it is critical that we understand the mechanisms by which these illusions develop and persist. A vast amount of research in psychology has investigated these mechanisms, but little work has been done on the extent to which it is possible to debias individuals against causal illusions. We present an intervention in which a sample of adolescents was introduced to the concept of experimental control, focusing on the need to consider the base rate of the outcome variable in order to determine if a causal relationship exists. The effectiveness of the intervention was measured using a standard contingency learning task that involved fake medicines that typically produce causal illusions. Half of the participants performed the contingency learning task before participating in the educational intervention (the control group), and the other half performed the task after they had completed the intervention (the experimental group). The participants in the experimental group made more realistic causal judgments than did those in the control group, which served as a baseline. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evidence-based educational intervention that could be easily implemented to reduce causal illusions and the many problems associated with them, such as superstitions and belief in pseudoscience.

What is unrealistic optimism?

“…To some extent, optimistic beliefs are sensitive to evidence. It has been shown that some forms of optimism and self-enhancement can be reduced or at least controlled by providing people with more information and making them more accountable for the accuracy of their predictions (e.g., Barberia et al, 2013, Sedikides et al, 2002, Weinstein, 1980). For instance, Sedikides argues that via introspective reflection people can control self-enhancing beliefs at least in the short-term, and that self-assessment is more accurate when people are held accountable for it (Sedikides, Horton, & Gregg, 2007).…”

Illusions of causality: how they bias our everyday thinking and how they could be reduced

“…This assessment procedure is now relatively standard, which facilitates comparisons across experiments and the evaluation of new applied strategies. This methodology has also been used when there is a need to accurately estimate the degree of illusion of causality that people show before and after receiving training on scientific thinking ( Barberia et al, 2013 ), which is of particular interest for the present report.…”

“…Following this idea, Barberia et al (2013) told a group of adolescents that they had developed a miracle product that would help them improve their physical and cognitive abilities. This was conducted quite theatrically, and the teenagers were allowed to try the properties of the product (a piece of regular ferrite) through several cognitive and physical exercises.…”

“…Moreover, teaching scientific methods does not seem to be enough either ( Willingham, 2007 ; Schmaltz and Lilienfeld, 2014 ), as many naïve preconceptions may survive even after extended scientific training ( Shtulman and Valcarcel, 2012 ). However, learning how to think scientifically and how to use scientific methods should at least provide an important safeguard against cognitive biases ( Lilienfeld et al, 2012 ; Barberia et al, 2013 ). Indeed, we suggest that scientific methods constitute the best possible tool, if not the only one, that has been developed to counteract the illusion of causality that can be found at the heart of many of those problems.…”

Positive and negative implications of the causal illusion

“…With this logic in mind, we designed an educational intervention aimed at high school students (Barberia, Blanco, Cubillas, & Matute, 2013). The design of our study comprised three phases that took place in a one-hour session: a staging phase, a workshop phase, and a measurement phase.…”