Concept · Cognitive Bias: Causal and statistical fallacies
Ecological fallacy
Origin: Robinson, 1950
Biological Parallel
Regions with high biodiversity show greater ecosystem stability—so adding species to any community should increase stability, right? Wrong. This is the ecological fallacy: inferring individual-level dynamics from aggregate patterns. Stability emerges from specific functional complementarity, not species count. Adding redundant or antagonistic species can destabilize. The whole doesn't predict the parts when context-dependent interactions dominate.