Research suggests that people sometimes perceive a relationship between stimuli when no such relationship exists (i.e., illusory correlation). Illusory-correlation effects are thought to play a central role in the formation of stereotypes and evaluations of minority versus majority groups, often leading to less favorable impressions of minorities. Extant theories differ in terms of whether they attribute illusory-correlation effects to processes operating during learning (belief formation) or measurement (belief expression), and whether different evaluation measures should be differentially sensitive to illusory-correlation effects. Past research found mixed evidence for dissociative effects of illusory-correlation manipulations on measures of implicit (i.e., automatic) and explicit (i.e., controlled) evaluation. Four high-powered studies obtained illusory-correlation effects on explicit evaluations, but not implicit evaluations probed with an Implicit Association Test, Evaluative Priming Task, and Affect Misattribution Procedure. The results are consistent with theories that attribute illusory-correlation effects to processes during belief expression.

研究表明，当不存在这种关系时，人们有时会感知刺激之间的关系（即，虚幻的相关性）。幻觉相关效应被认为在形成对少数群体与多数群体的刻板印象和评估中起着核心作用，通常会导致对少数群体的印象不太好。现有的理论在它们是否将幻觉相关效应归因于学习（信念形成）或测量（信念表达）期间操作的过程，以及不同的评估措施是否应该对错觉相关效应具有不同的敏感性方面存在差异。过去的研究发现，关于虚幻相关操作对内隐（即自动）和外显（即受控）评估的测量结果的分离效应的混合证据。四项强有力的研究获得了对显性评估的错觉相关效应，但没有通过隐性关联测试、评估启动任务和影响错误归因程序探讨的隐性评估。结果与将幻觉相关效应归因于信念表达过程的理论一致。