Figure 1. The pattern of spurious causal inferences for bivariate and partial correlations.

Switching from correlation to partial correlation improves causal inference (but is not perfect). We propose integrating inferences from both correlation and partial correlation, which we predict will produce further improvements to causal inferences. Red lines indicate spurious causal inferences. Note that, in the case of a collider, when A → C and B → C are positive then the spurious A – B connection induced by partial correlation will be negative (this becomes relevant in the Results. See also Figure 6).