A word to describe believing that two events occurring at the same time are linked to each other while they are not correlated at all.
For example: Bob walks on the street and yells at someone who wasn't doing anything wrong. He trips and falls. He believes this is karma. Him believing this is because of karma is called ....
Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin: "after this, therefore because of this") is a logical fallacy that states "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." It is often shortened simply to post hoc fallacy.
It’s a cognitive bias and I think the one you’re specifically describing is attentional bias. Where Bob, feeling guilty and thinking about shouting at some innocent, interprets his misfortune as a result. Or it could be confirmation bias if Bob already has a firm belief in karma and frames events in such a way as to confirm his existing belief.
a superstition TFD
- An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome.
As in:
Bob, a believer in superstitions, blames his tripping on karma!
