Pseudocontingencies: An Integrative Account of an Intriguing Cognitive Illusion

The term pseudocontingency (PC) denotes the logically unwarranted inference of a contingency between two variables X and Y from information other than pairs of xi, yi observations, namely, the variables’ univariate baserates as assessed in one or more ecological contexts. We summarize recent experimental evidence, showing that PCs can play a pivotal role in many areas of judgment and decision making. We argue that the exploitation of the informational value of baserates underlying PCs offers an alternative perspective on many phenomena in the realm of adaptive cognition that have been studied in isolation so far. Although PCs can lead to serious biases under some conditions, they afford an efficient strategy for inductive inference making in probabilistic environments that render baserate information, rather than genuine covariation information, readily available.