{"title":"Counterfactuals and the logic of causal selection.","authors":"Tadeg Quillien, Christopher G Lucas","doi":"10.1037/rev0000428","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Everything that happens has a multitude of causes, but people make causal judgments effortlessly. How do people select one particular cause (e.g., the lightning bolt that set the forest ablaze) out of the set of factors that contributed to the event (the oxygen in the air, the dry weather … )? Cognitive scientists have suggested that people make causal judgments about an event by simulating alternative ways things could have happened. We argue that this counterfactual theory explains many features of human causal intuitions, given two simple assumptions. First, people tend to imagine counterfactual possibilities that are both a priori likely and similar to what actually happened. Second, people judge that a factor C caused effect E if C and E are highly correlated across these counterfactual possibilities. In a reanalysis of existing empirical data, and a set of new experiments, we find that this theory uniquely accounts for people's causal intuitions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":21016,"journal":{"name":"Psychological review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Psychological review","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000428","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/6/8 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Everything that happens has a multitude of causes, but people make causal judgments effortlessly. How do people select one particular cause (e.g., the lightning bolt that set the forest ablaze) out of the set of factors that contributed to the event (the oxygen in the air, the dry weather … )? Cognitive scientists have suggested that people make causal judgments about an event by simulating alternative ways things could have happened. We argue that this counterfactual theory explains many features of human causal intuitions, given two simple assumptions. First, people tend to imagine counterfactual possibilities that are both a priori likely and similar to what actually happened. Second, people judge that a factor C caused effect E if C and E are highly correlated across these counterfactual possibilities. In a reanalysis of existing empirical data, and a set of new experiments, we find that this theory uniquely accounts for people's causal intuitions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
任何事情的发生都有多种原因,但人们却能毫不费力地做出因果判断。人们是如何从导致事件发生的一系列因素(空气中的氧气、干燥的天气......)中选择一个特定的原因(例如,使森林燃烧的闪电)呢?认知科学家认为,人们是通过模拟事情可能发生的其他方式来对事件进行因果判断的。我们认为,在两个简单假设的前提下,这种反事实理论可以解释人类因果直觉的许多特征。首先,人们倾向于想象既有先验可能性又与实际情况相似的反事实可能性。其次,如果 C 和 E 在这些反事实可能性中高度相关,人们就会判断因素 C 导致了效应 E。通过重新分析现有的经验数据和一组新的实验,我们发现这一理论能唯一地解释人们的因果直觉。(PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, 版权所有)。
期刊介绍:
Psychological Review publishes articles that make important theoretical contributions to any area of scientific psychology, including systematic evaluation of alternative theories.