Confidence and gradation in causal judgment

O'Neill, K., Henne, P, et al.

Cognition

Volume 223, June 2022, 105036

Abstract

When comparing the roles of the lightning strike and the dry climate in causing the forest fire, one might think that the lightning strike is more of a cause than the dry climate, or one might think that the lightning strike completely caused the fire while the dry conditions did not cause it at all. Psychologists and philosophers have long debated whether such causal judgments are graded; that is, whether people treat some causes as stronger than others. To address this debate, we first reanalyzed data from four recent studies. We found that causal judgments were actually multimodal: although most causal judgments made on a continuous scale were categorical, there was also some gradation. We then tested two competing explanations for this gradation: the confidence explanation, which states that people make graded causal judgments because they have varying degrees of belief in causal relations, and the strength explanation, which states that people make graded causal judgments because they believe that causation itself is graded. Experiment 1 tested the confidence explanation and showed that gradation in causal judgments was indeed moderated by confidence: people tended to make graded causal judgments when they were unconfident, but they tended to make more categorical causal judgments when they were confident. Experiment 2 tested the causal strength explanation and showed that although confidence still explained variation in causal judgments, it did not explain away the effects of normality, causal structure, or the number of candidate causes. Overall, we found that causal judgments were multimodal and that people make graded judgments both when they think a cause is weak and when they are uncertain about its causal role.

From the General Discussion

The current paper sought to address two major questions regarding singular causal judgments: are causal judgments graded, and if so, what explains this gradation?

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In other words, people make graded causal judgments both when they think a cause is weak and also when they are uncertain about their causal judgment. Although work is needed to determine precisely why and when causal judgments are influenced by confidence, we have demonstrated that these effects are separable from more well-studied effects on causal judgment. This is good news for theories of causal judgment that rely on the causal strength explanation: these theories do not need to account for the effects of confidence on causal judgment to be useful in explaining other effects. That is, there is no need for major revisions in how we think about causal judgments. Nevertheless, we think our results have important implications for these theories, which we outline below.

The research is here.

Causal judgments about atypical actions are influenced by agents' epistemic states

Kirfel, L. & Lagnado, D.

Cognition, Volume 212, July 2021.

Abstract

A prominent finding in causal cognition research is people’s tendency to attribute increased causality to atypical actions. If two agents jointly cause an outcome (conjunctive causation), but differ in how frequently they have performed the causal action before, people judge the atypically acting agent to have caused the outcome to a greater extent. In this paper, we argue that it is the epistemic state of an abnormally acting agent, rather than the abnormality of their action, that is driving people's causal judgments. Given the predictability of the normally acting agent's behaviour, the abnormal agent is in a better position to foresee the consequences of their action. We put this hypothesis to test in four experiments. In Experiment 1, we show that people judge the atypical agent as more causal than the normally acting agent, but also judge the atypical agent to have an epistemic advantage. In Experiment 2, we find that people do not judge a causal difference if no epistemic advantage for the abnormal agent arises. In Experiment 3, we replicate these findings in a scenario in which the abnormal agent's epistemic advantage generalises to a novel context. In Experiment 4, we extend these findings to mental states more broadly construed and develop a Bayesian network model that predicts the degree of outcome-oriented mental states based on action normality and epistemic states. We find that people infer mental states like desire and intention to a greater extent from abnormal behaviour when this behaviour is accompanied by an epistemic advantage. We discuss these results in light of current theories and research on people's preference for abnormal causes.

From the Conclusion

In this paper, we have argued that the typicality of actions changes how much an agent can foresee the consequences of their action. We have shown that it is this very epistemic asymmetry between a normally and abnormally acting agent that influences people’s causal judgments. Both employee and party organiser acted abnormally, but when acting, they also could have foreseen the event of a dust explosion to a greater extent. While further research is needed on this topic, the connection between action typicality and epistemic states brings us one step closer to understanding the enigmatic role of normality in causal cognition.

A pdf is here.

Norms Affect Prospective Causal Judgments

Henne, P., & others

(2019, December 30). 

https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/2nwb4

Abstract

People more frequently select norm-violating factors, relative to norm-conforming ones, as the cause of some outcome. Until recently, this abnormal-selection effect has been studied using retrospective vignette-based paradigms. We use a novel set of video stimuli to investigate this effect for prospective causal judgments—i.e., judgments about the cause of some future outcome. Four experiments show that people more frequently select norm-violating factors, relative to norm-conforming ones, as the cause of some future outcome. We show that the abnormal-selection effects are not primarily explained by the perception of agency (Experiment 4). We discuss these results in relation to recent efforts to model causal judgment.

From the Discussion

The results of these experiments have some important consequences for the study of causal cognition. While accounting for some of the limitations of past work on abnormal selection, we present strong evidence in support of modal explanations for abnormal-selection effects. Participants in our studies select norm-violating factors as causes for stimuli that reduce the presence of agential cues (Experiments 1-3), and increasing agency cues does not change this tendency (Experiment 4). Social explanations might account for abnormal-selection behavior in some contexts, but, in general, abnormal-selection behavior likely does not depend on perceived intentions of agents, assessments of blame, or other social concerns. Rather, abnormal-selection effects seem to reflect a more general causal reasoning process, not just processes related to social or moral cognition, that involves modal cognition.The modal explanations for abnormal selection effects predict the results that we present here; in non-social situations, abnormal-selection effects should occur, and they should occur for prospective causal judgments. Even if the social explanation can account for the results of Experiments 1-3, it does not predict the results of Experiment 4. In Experiment 4, we increased agency cues, and we saw an increase in perceived intentionality attributed to the objects in our stimuli. But we did not see a change in abnormal-selection behavior, as social explanations predict. While these results are not evidence that the social explanation is completely mistaken about causal-selection behavior, we have strong evidence that modal explanations account for these effects—even when agency cues are increased.

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Editor's note: This research is very important for psychologists, clinicians, and psychotherapists trying to understand and conceptualize their patient's behaviors and symptoms.  Studies show clinicians have poor inter-rater reliability to explain accurate the causes of behaviors and symptoms.  In this study, norm violations are more likely seen as causes, a bias for which we all need to understand.