Illusory Causation: Why It Occurs
研究发现，人们之所以高估显著刺激的因果作用，是因为显著信息在初始感知阶段就被以不同于非显著信息的方式加工，从而影响后续因果判断。
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.