Question

• Correlation doesn’t imply causation. Discuss this and illustrate this point with an example from a psychology majors perspective.

Answer 1

Correlation is a statistical technique which tells us how strongly the pair of variables are linearly related and change together. It does not tell us why and how behind the relationship but it just says the relationship exists( Mathematically).

Ice cream sales is correlated with homicides in New York (Study)

As the sales of ice cream rise and fall, so do the number of homicides. Does the consumption of ice cream causing the death of the people?

No. Two things are correlated doesn’t mean one causes other.

Correlation does not mean causality or in our example, ice cream is not causing the death of people.

When 2 unrelated things tied together, so these can be either bound by causality or correlation.

In Majority of the cases correlation, are just because of the coincidences. Just because it seems like one factor is influencing the other, it doesn’t mean that it’s actually does.

Correlation is something which we think, when we can’t see under the covers. So the less the information we have the more we are forced to observe correlations. Similarly the more information we have the more transparent things will become and the more we will be able to see the actual casual relationships.