Regression Fallacy
🧠Psych - 131 / 200
Hello,
It’s an amazing day to read about Regression Fallacy.
What is it?
Things like stock market prices, golf scores, and chronic back pain can fluctuate naturally and may regress towards the mean. The logical flaw is to make predictions that expect exceptional results to continue as if they were average.
People are most likely to take action when variance is at its peak. Then after results become more normal they believe that their action was the cause of the change when in fact it was not causal. [1]
Where does it occur?
The student did exceptionally poorly last semester, so I punished him. He did much better this semester. Clearly, punishment is effective in improving students’ grades.
Often exceptional performances are followed by more normal performances, so the change in performance might better be explained by regression towards the mean. Incidentally, tests have shown that people may develop a systematic bias for punishment and against reward because of reasoning analogous to this example of the regression fallacy.
Why do I need to know?
The regression fallacy can be used to dismiss valid explanations. Misapplication of regression to the mean can reduce all events to a "just so" story, without any proper cause or explained or real effect.
References & Studies: -
https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Regression_fallacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_fallacy
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