The mere co-occurrence of events or phenomena is mistakenly taken as evidence of a causal link between them, despite there being insufficient grounds for such a conclusion.
Example:
Every morning, the sun rises after the rooster crows.
Therefore, the sun rises because the rooster crows.
While this conclusion is certainly flattering for the rooster, we know that the sun will rise regardless. It is more likely that the dawn wakes the cockerel, caused by the sun rising shortly afterwards (a reverse and indirect causal relationship), or that he is woken by a bodily function known as an “internal clock” (a spurious correlation), and then begins to crow.
The term “false cause” is used here to refer to the rational yet erroneous inference of a causal relationship from an observed correlation. It covers the two fallacies usually described in Latin as “cum hoc ergo propter hoc” and post hoc ergo propter hoc.
The “causal illusion”, on the other hand, listed under “cognitive biases”, refers to an unconscious psychological effect that makes phenomena that occur at the same time or one after the other appear to be causally linked.
In the context of “statistics”, there is also the concept of “Spurious correlations”, which refers to statistical errors that make phenomena occurring together (that are “correlated”) appear as if they have a causal relationship.
These three concepts are closely interlinked and may even simply be different perspectives on the same phenomenon.
Occasionally, the media puts forward a correlative association between violent video games and violent acts carried out by young individuals. This could be outlined as follows:
We are hearing more and more about acts of violence committed by young people.
Young people are spending increasing amounts of time playing violent video games.
Therefore, it follows that violent video games cause violence.
If one applies the possible explanations described in the article on causality to this observation, the following possibilities emerge, which should be taken into account:
It is neither possible nor appropriate to discuss here which of these explanations is the most probable. It is important, however, to note that a causal link cannot be inferred solely from the fact that the phenomena occur together.
A statistic circulated on social media in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that the mortality rate in some regions correlated with the number of vaccinations administered there. This appeared to imply that the mortality was causally linked to vaccination.
As with the example above, it would be possible to enumerate all the potential links between the events here, but it is easy to see that the most likely explanation is that in a region where the number of infections in a region is high and hospitals are already overwhelmed, interest in vaccination is higher than in areas where the virus seems more like a remote issue.
If one were to express this as a rule of thumb, albeit an overly simplistic one, it might be expressed as: “Deaths are causingy vaccinations” (i.e. it is a reversed causal relationship).