Cheryl Willard - Lee College

4. Don’t mistake correlation for causation. It is easy to come to the wrong conclusion
about what causes behavior. Sometimes what appears to be a strong cause-effect
relationship may be an illusion. For example, let’s examine the first statement in the
roster of tabloid headlines – “Wiggling Your Ears Makes You Smarter.” Digging
underneath this headline, you may discover that the writer swears by ear wiggling as a
method of increasing intelligence. His evidence? He wiggled his ears all the way
through his college admission test and his score was in a top percentile. This silly
example demonstrates that the occurrence of two variables close together in time (for
example, ear wiggling and intelligent performance during test taking) can sometimes be
interpreted as causal. (Even smart people make this error!) Clearly, other variables could
have led to the writer’s performance on his admission test.
5. Do look for experimental comparisons that involve control conditions. Controlled
comparison is the key to ruling out alternative explanations that make some claims
implausible or unbelievable. We may never know the real cause for some effect unless
we perform systematic study on the proposed relations to determine whether there is any
other way to account for observed changes in behavior. Psychological research is heavily
biased toward experiments in which controlled comparisons can reduce alternative
explanations.
6. Do examine how behaviors are defined or operationalized. Definitions can be very
slippery, as anyone who has gone to a hair stylist and asked for “just a little” hair
trimming knows. Precision in definitions is even more important in psychological
research. Some cause-effect claims may seem very compelling until you require precise
definition of the terms used in the claim.
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