posted on 2015-07-03, 11:21authored byCaren A. Frosch, P. N. Johnson-Laird
One view of causation is deterministic: A causes B means that whenever A occurs, B occurs. An alternative view is that causation is probabilistic: the assertion means that given A, the probability of B is greater than some criterion, such as the probability of B given not-A. Evidence about the induction of causal relations cannot readily decide between these alternative accounts, and so we examined how people refute causal assertions. In four experiments most participants judged that a single counterexample of A and not-B refuted assertions of the form, A causes B. And, as a deterministic theory based on mental models predicted, participants were more likely to request multiple refutations for assertions of the form, A enables B. Similarly, refutations of the form not-A and B were more frequent for enabling than causal assertions. Causation in daily life seems to be a deterministic concept.
Funding
This research was supported in part by a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship awarded to
the first author by the Economic and Social Research Council held at the University of
Reading (PTA-026-27-1688) and in part by a National Science Foundation grant, NSF
grant SES 0844851, to the second author for the study of deductive and probabilistic
reasoning.
History
Citation
Acta Psychologica, 137 (2011) 280–291
Author affiliation
/Organisation/COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND PSYCHOLOGY/Themes/Neuroscience & Behaviour