Counterfactuals and the logic of causal selection.

IF 5.1 1区 心理学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY Psychological review Pub Date : 2024-10-01 Epub Date: 2023-06-08 DOI:10.1037/rev0000428
Tadeg Quillien, Christopher G Lucas
{"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).

查看原文
分享 分享
微信好友 朋友圈 QQ好友 复制链接
本刊更多论文
反事实和因果选择的逻辑。
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)。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 去求助
来源期刊
Psychological review
Psychological review 医学-心理学
CiteScore
9.70
自引率
5.60%
发文量
97
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.
期刊最新文献
A theory of flexible multimodal synchrony. Bouncing back from life's perturbations: Formalizing psychological resilience from a complex systems perspective. Bouncing back from life's perturbations: Formalizing psychological resilience from a complex systems perspective. The meaning of attention control. Counterfactuals and the logic of causal selection.
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
现在去查看 取消
×
提示
确定
0
微信
客服QQ
Book学术公众号 扫码关注我们
反馈
×
意见反馈
请填写您的意见或建议
请填写您的手机或邮箱
已复制链接
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
×
扫码分享
扫码分享
Book学术官方微信
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术
文献互助 智能选刊 最新文献 互助须知 联系我们:info@booksci.cn
Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。
Copyright © 2023 Book学术 All rights reserved.
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号 京ICP备2023020795号-1