Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)

Example of a Spurious Correlation: Chocolate and Nobel Prizes

What term describes a situation where two variables appear to be directly influencing each other, but in reality, their relationship is an illusion usually caused by a confounding variable?

A researcher discovers a strong positive correlation between the number of hours students spend on social media and their reported levels of anxiety. However, further analysis reveals that a third variable—academic workload—independently increases both social media use (as a coping mechanism) and anxiety levels. In this scenario, the original correlation between social media use and anxiety is best described as a spurious correlation.