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- Title
Selecting explanations from causal chains: Do statistical principles explain preferences for voluntary causes?
- Authors
Hilton, Denis J.; McClure, John; Sutton, Robbie M.
- Abstract
We investigate whether people prefer voluntary causes to physical causes in unfolding causal chains and whether statistical (covariation, sufficiency) principles can predict how people select explanations. Experiment 1 shows that while people tend to prefer a proximal (more recent) cause in chains of unfolding physical events, causality is traced through the proximal cause to an underlying distal (less recent) cause when that cause is a human action. Experiment 2 shows that causal preference is more strongly correlated with judgements of sufficiency and conditionalised sufficiency than with covariation or conditionalised covariation. In addition, sufficiency judgements are partial mediators of the effect of type of distal cause (voluntary or physical) on causal preference. The preference for voluntary causes to physical causes corroborates findings from social psychology, cognitive neuroscience and jurisprudence that emphasise the primacy of intentions in causal attribution processes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
- Subjects
CAUSATION (Philosophy); MORAL judgment; SOCIAL psychology; ATTRIBUTION (Social psychology); COGNITIVE neuroscience; JURISPRUDENCE; HUMAN behavior
- Publication
European Journal of Social Psychology, 2010, Vol 40, Issue 3, p383
- ISSN
0046-2772
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/ejsp.623