Spotlight on the Post Hoc Fallacy for Better Speaking and Presentations
Nick Lechnir, ACB, CPD
Vice President Education TM - Learning and Development Administrator at Optum Serve
The post hoc fallacy (from the Latin post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning “after this, therefore because of this”) is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone assumes that because one event occurred after another, then the second event must have been caused by the first.
For example, the post hoc fallacy occurs when someone assumes that orange juice can cure the flu, because they drank orange juice while they had the flu and then felt better a few days later.
The post hoc fallacy stands at the core of many fallacious arguments, so it’s important to understand it. As such, in the following article you will learn more about this fallacy, and see how you can respond to it effectively, as well as how you can avoid using it yourself.
An example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is the claim that if the rooster crowed immediately before the sun rose, then that means that the rooster caused the sun to rise.
Additional examples of the post hoc fallacy appear in various fields, such as science, medicine, psychology, economics, business, law, and politics. For instance:
In finance and investing, people sometimes assume that because a certain event occurred before a stock’s price rose or fell, then that event is necessarily the cause of the change in price.
In marketing and advertising, companies sometimes use the post hoc fallacy to imply that their product is beneficial in some way. For example, a company might say “in the year after we released our new test-prep material to the market, the average score on the test increased by 5%”, even though this doesn’t mean that their test-prep material was responsible for the increase.
In medicine, a notable example of the post hoc fallacy appears in some of the pseudoscientific arguments that suggest that there’s a link between vaccination and autism. As one study notes “[Dr. Andrew Wakefield] claimed that autism in the children he studied was associated with the MMR vaccination because the behavioral symptoms of the disorder first appeared after the children had been vaccinated. However, this observation overlooked the fact that autistic symptoms appear around 12 months of age which is when children are normally scheduled to receive the first dose of MMR vaccine.”
Furthermore, the post hoc fallacy can lead people to engage in superstitious thinking, also referred to as magical thinking, where they assume that coincidences and unrelated events are connected in a causal way, particularly as a result of supernatural influence.
For example, a sports fan sitting at home might notice that their favorite team did well whenever the fan drank lemonade, which can cause the fan to believe that them drinking lemonade at home helps their team do well in the field.
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To respond to this fallacy, you can ask the person who used it to elaborate on their reasoning, or you can explain to them why this type of reasoning is fallacious, potentially using relevant examples.
To avoid using this fallacy, you should identify situations where you’re suggesting that there’s a causal link between two events, outline your reasoning while asking yourself what supporting evidence you have, and make sure that you’re not arguing (even implicitly) that just because one event followed another, then the first event must have caused the second.
Remember that even if an argument uses the post hoc fallacy, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the associated causal relation doesn’t exist. It’s important to know when it’s being used and why, and whether it is helpful to the conversation or debate.
Where have you heard a post hoc fallacy? Was it in religion or politics?
Always keep leaping forward,
NJ
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