RESOLVING THE APPARENT DISCREPANCY BETWEEN THE INCONGRUENCY EFFECT AND THE EXPECTANCY-BASED ILLUSORY CORRELATION EFFECT - THE TRAP MODEL

The incongruency effect and the expectancy-based illusory correlation effect seem contradictory because they describe apparently contrasting consequences of previously held expectancies: better recall of incong ruent than congruent items but overestimation of congruent items. This article reserves this dilemma by presenting a model that is able to s imultaneously predict both of these effects. The Twofold Retrieval by Associative Pathways(TRAP) model adopts the encoding assumptions of pe rson memory models but distinguishes between two different retrieval p rocesses, exhaustive and heuristic, hypothesized to underlie recall an d frequency estimation, respectively. Experiment 1 showed that expecta ncy-based illusory correlation effects and incongruency effects are co mpatible in that they were produced simultaneously. Experiments 2 and 3 tested and rejected alternative explanations for the obtained patter n of results.