PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Research Article
ILLUSORY CAUSATION:
Why It Occurs
G. Daniel Lassiter,1 Andrew L. Geers,2 Patrick J. Munhall,1 Robert J. Ploutz-Snyder,3
and David L. Breitenbecher1
1
Ohio University, 2University of Toledo, and 3State University of New York Upstate Medical University
Abstract—Considerable evidence indicates that people overattribute
causality to a given stimulus when it is salient or the focus of their attention—the so-called illusory-causation phenomenon. Although illusory causation has proved to be quite robust and generalizable, a
compelling explanation for it has not been empirically documented.
Four social-attribution studies were conducted to test the hypothesis
that illusory causation occurs because salient information is initially
registered, or perceptually organized, differently than nonsalient information. The results provide considerable support for the notion that
people’s literal point of view affects how they initially perceive, or extract, information from an observed interaction, which in turn affects
their judgments regarding the causal influence exerted by each interactant.
Illusory causation occurs when people ascribe unwarranted causality to a stimulus simply because it is more noticeable or salient than
other available stimuli (McArthur, 1980, 1981; Taylor & Fiske, 1978;
Zebrowitz, 1990). As early as 1935, Koffka noted that objects that
stand out in the visual field, or are the focus of attention, are more
likely than less conspicuous objects to be judged the originators of a
physical event, even when there is no objective basis for such a conclusion. For example, when placed in a darkened room, people judge
that a widening gap between two pinpoints of light is caused by the
one that they happen to be looking at regardless of whether it is actually the one moving.
Instances of illusory causation, however, are not limited to cases
involving interactions among simple physical objects. Research indicates that it affects people’s causal attributions for more complex social interactions as well. In the first systematic demonstration of
illusory causation in the social domain, Taylor and Fiske (1975) had
observers view a casual, two-person conversation. The vantage point
of the observers was varied by seating them in different locations
around the two interactants. After the conversation ended, observers
rated each interactant in terms of the amount of causal influence he or
she exerted during the exchange. The results revealed that greater causality was attributed to whichever person observers happened to be
facing, which, of course, was determined by their seating position—an
entirely incidental factor that logically should have had no bearing on
their causal judgments.
It is important to note that the illusory-causation phenomenon generalizes to situations in which observed interactants do more than
merely engage in “getting acquainted” banter. Considerable evidence
shows that people fall prey to illusory causation even in situations in
which their judgments are of considerably greater import. Across 11
different experiments, it has been demonstrated that evaluations of a
Address correspondence to G. Daniel Lassiter, Department of Psychology,
Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701; e-mail: lassiter@ohio.edu.
VOL. 13, NO. 4, JULY 2002
criminal confession presented on videotape are biased by the camera
perspective taken during its initial recording (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, Handley, & Beers, 2001). The findings are consistent with more
mundane instances of illusory causation: Videotaped confessions recorded with the camera focused on the suspect—compared with videotapes from other camera points of view (e.g., focused equally on the
suspect and interrogator) or with more traditional presentation formats
(i.e., transcripts and audiotapes)—led mock jurors to judge that the
confessions were more voluntary. In light of the fact that actual criminal interrogations are usually videotaped with the camera positioned
behind the interrogator and focused squarely on the suspect (Kassin,
1997), the practical significance of illusory causation cannot be denied.
Although demonstrations of the robustness and generalizability of
illusory causation are ample, the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon have been difficult to pin down. Early attempts to identify a mediator of illusory causation emphasized memory processes (e.g.,
Fiske, Kenny, & Taylor, 1982; Smith & Miller, 1979). Generally, it
was argued that salient information tends to be more memorable than
nonsalient information, and this difference in memory is responsible
for the greater causality ascribed to salient information. The evidence
consistent with a solely memory-mediated explanation of illusory causation, however, is quite limited (cf. McArthur, 1980).
Newtson and his colleagues (Newtson, Rindner, Miller, & LaCross, 1978) and McArthur (1980) have suggested that illusory causation may have more to do with how people initially pick up or register
information from an observed interaction than with how they subsequently remember that information. That is, the point of view from
which individuals observe an interaction is argued to influence the initial registration or perceptual organization of information from the ongoing interaction, which in turn directly influences causal attributions
and related judgments. Although an intriguing hypothesis, the position
that illusory causation is perceptually mediated has not, to date, been
empirically evaluated. The present research, then, was designed to determine if the manner in which people subjectively register or segment
information from an observed interaction does indeed play a mediating role in the production of the illusory-causation phenomenon.
All four studies described here employed the behavior-segmentation technique developed by Newtson (1973, 1976). Briefly, this technique involves having participants view an ongoing behavior sequence
and instructing them to identify the most informative segments in the
sequence by pressing a button (that activates a recording device) each
time, in their judgment, one meaningful action ends and another begins. Participants’ button-pressing responses provide an indication of
the number of actions discriminated or registered (i.e., segmentation
rate), with more actions, or a higher segmentation rate, associated with
the extraction of a greater amount of information from the observed
behavior. A considerable amount of data attests to the reliability, validity, and nonreactivity of this technique (Newtson & Engquist, 1976;
Newtson, Engquist, & Bois, 1976; Newtson et al., 1978). Moreover,
Copyright © 2002 American Psychological Society
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the segmentation procedure has been used successfully to investigate
the possible role of perceptual processing in a variety of social judgment effects (e.g., Cohen & Ebbesen, 1979; Lassiter, Briggs, & Bowman, 1991; Lassiter, Geers, Apple, & Beers, 2000; Lassiter, Koenig, &
Apple, 1996; Lassiter & Stone, 1984; Markus, Smith, & Moreland,
1985; Newtson, 1973; Newtson & Rindner, 1979).
STUDY 1: AN INITIAL TEST OF THE PERCEPTUALSEGMENTATION HYPOTHESIS
In his seminal article on behavior-segmentation processes, Newtson (1973) reported that a higher segmentation rate produced more
dispositional attributions for an actor’s behavior. Newtson noted that
this result was consistent with Kelley’s (1967) suggestion that a higher
information state regarding an actor is associated with a higher likelihood of interpreting his or her behavior in dispositional terms. This
link between segmentation rate and attribution appears robust, as it has
been replicated on several occasions (Deaux & Major, 1977; Lassiter,
Stone, & Rogers, 1988; Wilder, 1978). Newtson and his colleagues
(Newtson et al., 1978) later discovered that when certain action-defining features in an ongoing behavior sequence were hidden from view,
observers were unable to use unseen changes in those features as a basis for segmenting the behavior into meaningful actions. As a result,
observers who could not directly see such feature changes segmented
the sequence in a systematically different manner than a comparable
group of observers for which all feature changes were readily visible.
Combining their results with the finding that a higher segmentation
rate is associated with more dispositional attributions for another person’s observed behavior, Newtson et al. (1978) suggested that pointof-view effects in causal attribution might be, in part, a consequence
of differences in segmentation, because not all the same feature
changes would be available to observers who are viewing an event
from different perspectives. According to this argument, then, observers’ divergent perspectives would cause them to segment an interaction differently, which in turn would lead them to arrive at disparate
causal attributions. Study 1 provided an initial test of this possibility.
B. After viewing and segmenting the conversation, all participants
completed a short questionnaire. Included in this questionnaire were
three items, taken from previous research (e.g., Taylor & Fiske, 1975),
that were designed to assess participants’ judgments of causality. Participants were asked to indicate on separate 9-point scales how much a
particular interactant “set the tone of the conversation,” “determine[d]
the kind of information exchanged,” and “cause[d] his partner to behave as he did.” Participants responded to each of these items twice,
once for Person A and once for Person B, with the order counterbalanced.
Results
The findings (depicted in Fig. 1) were consistent with the perceptual-mediation hypothesis.1 Participants identified relatively more meaningful actions in the behavior of the interactant who, by virtue of the
camera perspective, was more visually salient to them, Flinear(1, 101) 17.56, p .001.
Following Taylor and Fiske (1975) and other researchers, we
summed the three attribution items to create a single causality index.
As can be seen in Figure 1, this measure revealed the typical illusorycausation pattern. Participants ascribed relatively greater causality to
the interactant who was more clearly visible to them, and this visibility was determined wholly by the camera perspective, Flinear(1, 101) 5.37, p .05.
We conducted a path analysis to determine if segmentation rate
was a viable mediator of participants’ causality judgments. Using procedures described by Kenny, Kashy, and Bolger (1998), we estimated
path coefficients (standardized beta weights) with regression analyses.
The results, which are presented in Figure 2, were again consistent
with the perceptual-mediation hypothesis. The paths from camera perspective to segmentation rate and from segmentation rate to causality
index were both significant (ps .05). The direct path from camera
perspective to causality index (after partialing out the effect of segmentation rate) was not significant (p .59). A modified Sobel test
(cf. Kenny et al., 1998) further established that removing the variance
associated with segmentation rate significantly reduced the beta weight
of the direct path, z 1.74, p .05, one-tailed.
Method
A stimulus conversation between two male undergraduates was recorded simultaneously by three video cameras, each taking a different
perspective. These differing camera perspectives (Person A focus, Person B focus, equal focus) served as our manipulation of observers’
vantage point (cf. Briggs & Lassiter, 1994; Taylor, Crocker, Fiske,
Sprinzen, & Winkler, 1979, Experiment 3). In an attempt to make the
actual contributions of the two interactants objectively equal, each of
them initiated the same number of questions during the 6-min conversation.
Recruited for an experiment on “social observation,” 104 undergraduate volunteers (participating individually) were asked to view
one version of the videotaped conversation. Participants were given
two handheld tally registers (one labeled “A” and one labeled “B”) so
that the number of perceived actions of Person A and Person B could
be recorded separately. The experimenter then explained: “Simply
press one of the two tally registers whenever, in your judgment, one
meaningful action ends and another begins. These should be whatever
actions seem natural and meaningful to you.” Cards with the letters
“A” and “B” were positioned on top of the video monitor to identify
for participants which interactant was Person A and which was Person
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STUDY 2: DOES THE SEGMENTATION TASK ALTER
OBSERVERS’ CAUSALITY JUDGMENTS?
Study 1 provided the first empirical demonstration that the phenomenon of illusory causation may be perceptually mediated. One
possible problem with this study, however, is that engaging in the segmentation task itself may have altered or influenced participants’ causality judgments in some manner. Although, as noted earlier, the
segmentation procedure has been shown to be nonreactive, we wanted
to be certain that the pattern of causality judgments obtained was not
simply an artifact of participants’ having had explicitly segmented the
observed interaction. We addressed this concern in Study 2, by having
only half of the participants engage in the segmentation task. All participants, however, provided causality judgments. In this experiment,
1. Difference scores (Person A Person B) were computed for each dependent variable, and these values were standardized to facilitate comparisons
across the different measures. Reported analyses for all experiments were conducted on these standardized difference scores.
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tive. Following the presentation of the confession evidence, participants provided their judgments of the confession’s voluntariness on
rating scales identical to those used in prior investigations of the camera-perspective bias (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, et al., 2001). Specifically, on separate 9-point scales participants indicated the degree to
which the confession was coerced (1 not at all and 9 to a large
degree) and the degree to which it was voluntary (1 not at all and
9 to a large degree); they also indicated whether it was (1) given
freely by the suspect or (9) forced out by the detective. Responses to
these items were combined to form a single voluntariness index.
Results
Fig. 1. Difference scores (Person A Person B in SD units) as a
function of camera focus for the segmentation and causality measures
in Study 1.
The findings were similar to those of Study 1. Participants perceived more meaningful actions in the suspect’s behavior when the
camera was focused on him rather than on the detective. The pattern
was exactly the opposite when the camera was instead focused on the
detective. In this condition, the behavior of the detective was perceived to contain more meaningful actions. This overall pattern of the
segmentation data was significant, F(1, 41) 3.17, p .05, onetailed (see Fig. 3).
Replicating previously published results, participants’ voluntariness judgments were significantly altered by the camera’s perspective.
Those viewing the suspect-focus version of the confession judged it to
be more voluntary than did those viewing the detective-focus version,
F(1, 79) 7.57, p .01. This difference (depicted in Fig. 3) was obtained whether participants were segmenting the interrogation or not
(i.e., there were no significant effects involving the segmentation-task
variable).
we also used videotapes of a mock confession as our stimuli. We did
this to ensure that the effects found with the conversation stimuli are
generalizable to situations in which the stakes are presumably much
higher.
Method
Eighty-three participants were asked to assume the role of jurors in
a study ostensibly designed to “discover how people in real courtrooms make decisions about the validity of confession evidence.” After a brief explanation of their juridic responsibilities, participants
were assigned to segment or only view either the suspect-focus or the
detective-focus version of a videotaped confession to a burglary we
used in a previous study (Lassiter, Geers, Munhall, et al., 2001). Those
having to segment were once again given two buttons to press, only
this time one was for recording the meaningful actions of the suspect
and the other was for recording the meaningful actions of the detec-
Fig. 2. Path diagram and coefficients (standardized beta weights) for
Study 1. Solid paths are significant, p .05.
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Fig. 3. Dependent measures (in SD units) from Study 2. For the segmentation measure only, a difference score (suspect detective) is
displayed.
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Finally, a path analysis indicated for the second time that the effect
of camera perspective on judgments was mediated, at least in part, by
the manner in which the observed information was initially segmented
(see Fig. 4). That is, the paths from camera perspective to segmentation rate and from segmentation rate to voluntariness index were both
significant (ps .04, one-tailed, and .04, two-tailed, respectively),
whereas the direct (nonmediated) path from camera perspective to
voluntariness index was not (p .36). Extracting the variance associated with segmentation rate produced a marginally significant reduction in the beta weight of the direct path, z 1.30, p .10, one-tailed.
STUDY 3: IS SEGMENTATION RATE
CONFOUNDED WITH THE AMOUNT OF
INFORMATION RECALLED?
Studies 1 and 2 indicated that variation in perceptual segmentation
is a possible mediator of point-of-view-based illusory causation. However, these studies did not permit a clear demonstration of a unique effect of segmentation rate on causality and voluntariness judgments.
That is, several previous studies (Geers & Lassiter, 1999; Lassiter,
1988; Lassiter, Geers, & Apple, 2002; Lassiter & Slaw, 1991; Lassiter
et al., 1988) have shown that segmentation rate influences the later recall of information from an observed event, with a higher rate of segmentation leading to greater subsequent recall. Thus, a memorymediation account suggests that the greater recall typically associated
with a higher rate of segmentation could be ultimately responsible for
the bias in judgments. The goal of Study 3, then, was to establish
whether segmentation rate still contributes significant variance to the
biasing effect of camera perspective once the effect of recall is partialed out.
Method
The experiment was identical to Study 1 except for the following
changes: The equal-focus version of the conversation was not used,
half of the 66 participants did not perform the segmentation task, and a
measure of the number of meaningful actions recalled was obtained
after participants completed the causality items.
Results
Findings on all three measures are displayed in Figure 5. First, it is
important to note that the act of segmenting the observed interaction
did not significantly alter responses on any of the dependent measures.
The results are consistent with the two preceding studies. Significant
effects of camera perspective were found for both the segmentation
and causality measures, indicating that more meaningful actions were
Fig. 4. Path diagram and coefficients (standardized beta weights) for
Study 2. Solid paths are significant, p .05, one-tailed.
302
Fig. 5. Difference scores (Person A Person B in SD units) from
Study 3.
extracted from, and greater causality attributed to, the more visually
salient interactant, Fsegmentation(1, 33) 15.81, p .001; Fcausality(1, 62) 6.45, p .05. This same pattern was also evident on the recall measure. That is, participants remembered significantly more about the interactant who was more directly in the camera’s focus, F(1, 62) 62.87, p .001. This latter finding lends credence to the possibility
that recall is perhaps a more proximate mediator of salience effects
than segmentation.
A path analysis was conducted to isolate the effects of segmentation and recall and determine if one, both, or neither mediated the influence of camera perspective on causality judgments. The results of
this analysis can be seen in Figure 6. Segmentation and recall indepen-
Fig. 6. Path diagram and coefficients (standardized beta weights) for
Study 3. Solid paths are significant, p .05.
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Fig. 7. Difference scores (Person A Person B in SD units) from Study 4.
dently accounted for significant portions of variance (ps .05 for all
relevant paths). Once segmentation and recall were partialed out, the
remaining direct effect of camera perspective on causality judgments
was rendered nonsignificant (p .43). Significant reductions in the
beta weight of the direct path were found after controlling both for
segmentation rate, z 1.80, p .05, one-tailed, and for recall, z 1.90, p .05, one-tailed.
STUDY 4: TESTING THE ROBUSTNESS OF THE
LINK BETWEEN SEGMENTATION RATE AND
ILLUSORY CAUSATION
Study 3 showed that segmentation rate contributed unique variance
to the effect of camera perspective on causality judgments. In our
fourth and final study, the strength of this link between segmentation
rate and illusory causation was examined. Taylor et al. (1979, Experiment 1) demonstrated that illusory causation occurs even when observers are under cognitive load. Taylor et al. reported, however, that
when cognitive load was high, which is often the case in real-life situations (cf. Gilbert, 1995), recall was severely disrupted and failed to
mediate illusory-causation effects. In Study 4, some participants performed a cognitive-load task similar to one used by Taylor et al. To be
considered a viable candidate for mediation, segmentation rate, unlike
recall, should not be disrupted and should continue to influence illusory causation even when observers are “cognitively busy.”
VOL. 13, NO. 4, JULY 2002
Method
Two hundred twenty-one volunteers participated. The experiment
replicated the design of Study 3 except for the following critical
changes: All participants performed the segmentation task, but half
additionally counted backward aloud as they viewed one of three versions of the interaction sequence (Person A salient, Person B salient,
or both persons equally salient). This counting task served as our manipulation of cognitive load (cf. Lassiter, 1988). Finally, to further assess the generalizability of our findings, we presented half of the
participants with the tape from Study 3 and half with a different conversation tape.
Results and Discussion
Which of the two conversations participants viewed accounted for
no significant variance in their responses; therefore, this variable was
dropped from the reported analyses. The main pattern of results for the
segmentation, recall, and causality data is presented in Figure 7.2 The
counting task significantly impaired participants’ recall for the observed interaction, thereby attesting to its effectiveness as a cognitive
load manipulation, F(1, 215) 13.63, p .001. Whereas noncounters
2. Values for the equal-focus condition are not displayed so that the critical
pattern of results can be more easily discerned.
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recalled a mean of 12.61 distinct pieces of information from the conversation, counters recalled a mean of only 9.51. (Note that this effect
is not apparent in Figure 1 because the use of difference scores, Person
A Person B, for all dependent variables allows only the critical interaction effects associated with the illusory-causation phenomenon to
be seen.) Neither the segmentation nor the causality data revealed any
reliable effects of the counting manipulation (Fs 2). As depicted in
Figure 7, however, all three dependent measures produced a significant effect of the camera perspective, Fs(2, 215) 13.57, 3.58, and
27.49 (ps .001, .05, and .001) for the segmentation, causality, and
recall measures, respectively.
The same path analysis was performed as in the previous study.
Unlike in Study 3, recall was not a reliable mediator of the influence
of camera perspective (see Fig. 8). Nonetheless, segmentation rate
continued to account for a significant portion of variance in causality
judgments (ps .05 for relevant paths). Controlling for segmentation
rate produced a nearly significant reduction in the beta weight of the
direct path, z 1.54, p .06, one-tailed. (A meta-analysis of Studies
1–4 indicated that the removal of variance due to segmentation rate
led to a significant reduction in the direct effect of camera perspective
on causality and voluntariness judgments, z 3.19, p .001.) In contrast, controlling for recall produced a negligible reduction in the beta
weight of the direct path, z 0.197, p .84. (A meta-analysis of
Studies 3 and 4 indicated that the removal of variance due to recall
produced no reliable reduction in the direct effect of camera perspective on causality judgments, z 1.48, p .14.)
Overall, the findings of Study 4 provide the strongest results yet
that differences in the initial perceptual registration of information
likely contribute to the illusory-causation phenomenon. Even when
cognitive resources were relatively taxed and recall was eliminated as
a viable mediator, the manner in which participants perceptually segmented the interaction into its meaningful components—which was
determined largely by their visual perspective—continued to influence
impressions of the relative causal agency of the two interactants.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
As noted earlier, prior research on illusory causation has tended to
proffer memory mechanisms as the key to understanding the phenomenon. Initially, consideration was given to the possibility that the sheer
amount of information recalled mediates the impact of point of view
on causal attributions (Taylor & Fiske, 1975). Subsequent investigations found volume of recall to be an unlikely candidate for mediation
(cf. McArthur, 1980, 1981; Taylor & Fiske, 1978). Later mediation
models shifted to emphasizing the ease with which information could
be recalled, rather than the amount that could be recalled (e.g., Pryor
& Kriss, 1977). However, follow-up studies failed to support this explanatory modification as well (Fiske et al., 1982). A third possible
memory mediator of illusory causation did receive some preliminary
empirical backing—recall of information that is specifically relevant
to causal influence (Fiske et al., 1982). Unfortunately, this account of
illusory causation can be criticized on logical grounds. As argued by
McArthur (1980),
Relevant recall lacks the quality of a true explanation insofar as it fails to explain how perceivers come to recall more information which is relevant to the
causal impact of salient actors rather than recalling more information which is
relevant to their lack of impact and/or more information which is irrelevant to
causality. In short, this explanation seems to require that perceivers selectively
perceive the causal efficacy of a salient actor. And, since it is such selective
perception that the relevant recall mediator is attempting to explain, the explanation is circular. (p. 510)
The present research suggests that illusory causation, to paraphrase
Gilbert (1995), is less a species of memory and more a species of perception. That is, our studies provide considerable support for the notion that a person’s literal point of view affects how he or she initially
registers, or extracts, information from an observed interaction, which
in turn affects his or her judgments regarding the causal influence exerted by each interactant. These results are consistent with a growing
body of research and theory indicating that attributions and many
other social judgments are often the result, at least partially, of perception-based, on-line processes (Gilbert, 1989; Hastie & Park, 1986;
Kassin & Baron, 1985; Uleman, 1987).
It is important to note that in none of our four studies did we manipulate segmentation rate, so we cannot say definitively that changes
in segmentation rate were responsible for the observed instances of illusory causation. However, in a series of related investigations, we did
find that directly varying participants’ rate of segmentation produced
systematic differences in the extent to which they judged an observed
person’s behavior to be the result of dispositional or situational factors
(Lassiter, Geers, Flannery, & Ploutz-Snyder, 2001). Such data, along
with those of Newtson (1973) described earlier, provide experimental
evidence that variation in segmentation rate does affect attributional
judgments. These findings notwithstanding, it would be prudent for
future research to demonstrate that a direct manipulation of segmentation rate specifically influences the magnitude of the illusory-causation effect.
Acknowledgments—Portions of this research were supported by funds
from the Ohio Board of Regents, the Ohio University Research Committee,
and the National Science Foundation (BNS-8911067 and SBR-9514966).
We thank Kevin Apple, Melissa Beers, Mark Buckley, Kim Dudley, Andrea
Hadley, Ashleigh Hillier, Laurie Olsen, Paul Weiland, and Amy Wells for
their contributions to this project.
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Fig. 8. Path diagram and coefficients (standardized beta weights) for
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