An illusory correlation is the perception of a relationship between two variables when no relationship actually exists. For example, people sometimes assume that because two events occurred together at one point in the past, that one event was the cause of the other. Stereotypes are also a good example of illusory correlation. It is very common for humans to stereotype especially when it comes to race or skin color.

I grew up in a suburb of New York, which comprised of a diverse population. I’ve had friends ranging from Asian to African American. Living in New York was definitely a great experience for me because I was able to meet people of different cultures, which opened up my horizon on cultures.

I have a friend in college who is from the United States but went to boarding school in Japan. He had a great experience going to school there especially because he was able to explore the culture and meet different people. He said the toughest thing for him being Japan was communicating with the people there since he was a white male who did not know much Japanese and was also not used to the customs and culture.  When I first met my friend freshmen year, the topic of traveling arose in conversation. He started to tell me about his experience going to boarding school in Japan. After he was done telling his story, I of course asked him questions about his experiences of attending school in another country. The question that I asked that pertains to the illusory correlation was, “how did you perform academically especially because Asians in general are known to be hard workers when it comes to academics.” My friend smirked for a second and told me that he has been asked this question many times before. He told me even though he was coming from the United States that had no effect on how well my friend performed as a student. He told me he was always the first in his class when it came to academics when attending the boarding school. I of course was shocked because I assumed that if the majority of Asians from where I lived did well in school then all Asians in general did well in school. After that day I realized that I couldn’t make assumptions or hold the illusory correlation for different races. Just because someone is from a particular race and is a hard worker doesn’t justify that all of the people from that race are hard workers.