Redelmeier D A, Tversky A
Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, ON Canada.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1996 Apr 2;93(7):2895-6. doi: 10.1073/pnas.93.7.2895.
There is a widespread and strongly held belief that arthritis pain is influenced by the weather; however, scientific studies have found no consistent association. We hypothesize that this belief results, in part at least, from people's tendency to perceive patterns where none exist. We studied patients (n = 18) for more than I year and found no statistically significant associations between their arthritis pain and the weather conditions implicated by each individual. We also found that college students (n = 97) tend to perceive correlations between uncorrelated random sequences. This departure of people's intuitive notion of association from the statistical concept of association, we suggest, contributes to the belief that arthritis pain is influenced by the weather.
人们普遍且坚信关节炎疼痛会受天气影响；然而，科学研究并未发现二者存在稳定的关联。我们推测，这种观念至少部分源于人们倾向于在本不存在模式的地方察觉到模式。我们对18名患者进行了为期一年多的研究，发现他们的关节炎疼痛与各自所提及的天气状况之间不存在统计学上的显著关联。我们还发现，97名大学生倾向于在不相关的随机序列之间察觉到相关性。我们认为，人们关于关联的直观概念与统计学上的关联概念之间的这种偏差，导致了关节炎疼痛受天气影响这一观念的产生。
