Quantitative causal selection patterns in token causation

PLoS One. 2019 Aug 1;14(8):e0219704. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0219704. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

When many events contributed to an outcome, people consistently judge some more causal than others, based in part on the prior probabilities of those events. For instance, when a tree bursts into flames, people judge the lightning strike more of a cause than the presence of oxygen in the air-in part because oxygen is so common, and lightning strikes are so rare. These effects, which play a major role in several prominent theories of token causation, have largely been studied through qualitative manipulations of the prior probabilities. Yet, there is good reason to think that people's causal judgments are on a continuum-and relatively little is known about how these judgments vary quantitatively as the prior probabilities change. In this paper, we measure people's causal judgment across parametric manipulations of the prior probabilities of antecedent events. Our experiments replicate previous qualitative findings, and also reveal several novel patterns that are not well-described by existing theories.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Attitude*
  • Causality*
  • Humans
  • Intention
  • Judgment / physiology*
  • Models, Psychological*
  • Probability

Grants and funding

FC was supported by Grant N00014-14-1-0800 from the Office of Naval Research. TG was supported by the Center for Brains, Minds & Machines (CBMM), which is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Center (Award CCF-1231216). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.