Illusory Correlation in the Perception of Individuals and Groups

In the present study, we investigated the impact of target salience on the formation of illusory correlations in both individuals and groups. Heightening the salience of a group target was found to increase the degree of perceived association between that salient group and an infrequent (and thus distinctive) category of behaviors. Heightening the salience of an individual target, on the other hand, increased the degree to which the salient individual was perceived as adopting a frequent category of behaviors. It is suggested that these findings reflect qualitative differences in the ways in which information about groups and individuals is initially encoded an organized. Specifically, it is proposed that impressions of individuals are made “on line” and that illusory correlations about individuals reflect impression-based judgments. Illusory correlations about groups, on the other hand, are proposed to reflect memory-based judgments. The nature of the initial processing is likely to determine the relation that an observer perceives between a salient target and a distinctive type of behavior.