Work

A large-scale study and six-month follow-up of an intervention to reduce causal illusions in high school students

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Causal illusions consist of believing that there is a causal relationship between events that are actually unrelated. This bias is associated with pseudoscience, stereotypes, and other unjustified beliefs. Thus, it seems important to develop educational interventions to reduce them. To our knowledge the only debiasing intervention designed to be used at schools, was developed by Barberia et al. (2013), focusing on base rates, control conditions, and confounding variables. Their assessment used an active causal illusion task where participants could manipulate the candidate cause. The intervention reduced causal illusions in adolescents, but was only tested in a small experimental project. The present research evaluates it in a large-scale project through a collaboration with the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) and was conducted in schools to make it ecologically valid. It included a pilot study (n = 287), a large-scale implementation (n = 1,668; 40 schools) and a six-month follow-up (n = 353). Results showed medium-to-large and long-lasting effects on the reduction of causal illusions. To our knowledge, this is the first research showing the efficacy and long-term effects of a debiasing intervention against causal illusions that can be used on a large scale through the educational system.

Source: Royal Society Open Science

DOI: 10.1098/rsos.240846

Authors: Naroa Martínez, Helena Matute, Fernando Blanco, Itxaso Barberia

Institutions: Universidad de Deusto, Universidad de Granada, Universitat de Barcelona

Language: English

Topic: Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics

Subfield: General Decision Sciences

Field: Decision Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,471