Contingency Learning and the Illusion of Control

Vocabulary definitions focused on the psychological theories and experiments surrounding causality, contingency, and the illusion of control as discussed in the lecture transcript.

Contingency Learning

The study of how animals and humans infer causality and the errors that arise when making those inferences.

Contingency

The core element of Skinner's conditioning paradigm, defined as the difference between the probability of an outcome given a response and the probability of an outcome if no response is made: $P(O|R) - P(O|\text{no } R)$.

Hammond's Study

An experiment showing rats pick up subtle variations in contingency; a rat stopped responding when the contingency dropped to zero because the probability of reinforcement for doing nothing ($0.05$) equaled the probability of reinforcement for pressing a bar.

David Hume

A philosopher who proposed basic principles for when things are perceived as causally related, including contiguity, cause before effect, and consistency of effect.

Contiguity

The principle that events are more likely to be seen as connected if they occur together in time and space.

Consistency of Effect

The principle that if event A consistently comes before event B, it is more likely to be perceived as the cause of B.

Wassermann's Lights and Key Study

A task where participants rating the causal relationship between pressing a button and a light coming on showed that human causal ratings correspond well with actual mathematical contingency.

Skinner's Superstitious Conditioning Study

A study where pigeons associated accidental behaviors, such as turning circles, with grain delivery, despite no actual causal relationship existing.

Auto-shaping

The process by which animals associate their current behavior with a delivered reinforcement, even if the reinforcement occurs independently of the behavior.

Illusory Correlation

Associating a specific behavior with an outcome when no real link exists, often seen in gambling environments or folk remedies for the common cold.

Matute's White Noise Study

An experiment where participants tried to turn off bursts of white noise; results showed that high rates of reinforcement ($75\%$) fooled people into thinking they had control over a random task.

Illusion of Control

A concept defined by Langer in 1975 as a subjective probability of control over an outcome that is greater than the objective probability ($P(\text{subjective}) > P(\text{objective})$).

Self-serving Attributions

The tendency to attribute positive outcomes to one's own skill or abilities and failures to external factors.

Schizotypy

A trait associated with a heightened or exaggerated sense of perception, where individuals see too many connections between random events, making them prone to an illusion of control.

Skill Factors in Chance Tasks

Elements associated with skilled tasks—such as practice, familiarity, involvement, choice, and competition—that Langer found could falsely induce a sense of control in purely chance-based activities.

Method of Difference

A principle attributed to John Stuart Mill where one tests for causality by observing if an outcome occurs even when the hypothesized causal behavior is not performed.