Stereotypic statements about social groups are correlational in nature. That is, they express the speaker's belief in the relationship between two variables, one having to do with group membership and the other being a psychological attribute. This paper describes research directed toward determining cognitive biases influencing the development of…

Illusory correlation refers to an erroneous inference a person makes about the relationship between two categories of events. The present findings demonstrate that distortions in judgment can result from the cognitive mechanisms involved in processing information about co-occurring events, at least when the various events co-occur with…