Similarly, confirmation bias can lead people to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms their preexisting belief that a cause-and-effect relationship exists. For example, jumping-to-conclusions bias (making decisions without enough information) can misguide people into inferring causality. Chronological order is a necessary but not sufficient condition of a cause-and-effect relationship.Ī number of cognitive biases may also feed into people’s tendency to fall for the post hoc fallacy. Due to this, people confuse the temporal order of events with an actual causal connection. People often commit the post hoc fallacy without realizing it, simply because of the way the human mind has evolved: it extracts causality from coincidences. In this case, post hoc fallacy (A caused B) is combined with denying the antecedent, another fallacy which takes it a step further by assuming that “if A caused B, avoiding A will prevent B.” Why does post hoc fallacy occur? This often plays out in how politicians interpret unemployment statistics or crime reduction. Sometimes, people make a logical leap to post hoc thinking when they believe that they can eliminate a problem by eliminating its (alleged) cause. Superstitions (e.g., attributing a misfortune to an “unlucky” event like walking under a ladder) follow the same pattern. The post hoc fallacy can also lead to magical thinking: the belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible link (e.g., believing that inner thoughts can influence the external world without action). It is at the heart of many pseudoscientific arguments, the most notable and persistent being the false belief that certain types of vaccines are responsible for autism in children. The post hoc fallacy leads to misconceptions about the causes of various phenomena. In research, the same idea is expressed through the phrase “ correlation doesn’t imply causation.” Why is post hoc fallacy a problem? More specifically, it belongs to the category of causal fallacies, where a causal connection is assumed without proof, merely on the basis of correlation or co-occurrence. The post hoc fallacy is a form of logical fallacy because it is based on a false premise: the idea that if one event happens before another, then the first event must be the cause of the second. In the example above, even if the software did cause the computer to crash, there isn’t enough evidence to prove this: the chronological order of the events alone does not justify the causal conclusion. The point is not that there can’t be a causal connection between A and B but rather that there isn’t adequate evidence for the conclusion. Post hoc fallacies are committed when one argues that because B happened immediately after A, A must be the cause of B. “Post hoc” is a shortened version of the Latin phrase “post hoc ergo propter hoc,” meaning “after this, therefore because of this.” The post hoc fallacy occurs when we draw a causal conclusion without sufficient evidence to support it. Frequently asked questions about post hoc fallacy.
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