Causal versus diagnostic contingencies: On self-deception and on the voter's illusion.

Two experiments were conducted to test the notion that people select actions that are diagnostic of favorable outcomes even though the actions do not cause those outcomes. In the first experiment, subjects immersed their forearm into a chest of circulating cold water before and after physical exercise. Depending on condition, subjects learned that a long life expectancy was associated either with increases or decreases in tolerance in cold water after the exercise. As predicted, subjects showed changes in tolerance on the second trial in the direction correlated with a long, healthy life. In the second experiment, subjects encountered one of two theories about the sort of voters who determine the margin of victory in an election. Only one of the theories would enable voting subjects to imagine that they could induce other like-minded persons to vote. As predicted, more subjects indicated that they would vote given that theory than given a theory in which the subject's vote would not be diagnostic of the electoral outcome, although the causal impact of the subject's vote is the same under both theories. (Author)