Normal Causes for Normal Effects: Reinvigorating the Correspondence Hypothesis About Judgments of Actual Causation

Harinen, Totte

doi:10.1007/s10670-017-9876-4

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…As a result, more counterfactual alternatives come to mind in which the outcome would have been absent as a result of a change in the abnormal agent's behaviour, emphasizing the agent's perceived causal strength. Alternative theories have been suggested with reference to pragmatics (Grice, 1989;Hilton & Jaspars, 1987;Kirfel, Icard, & Gerstenberg, 2020), or co-variation (Cheng & Novick, 1991;Harinen, 2017). Prescriptive norms have been claimed to influence causal judgments via normative judgments such as blame or responsibility Sytsma et al, 2012), or by shifting the understanding of the causal question to the domain of accountability .…”

Section: Abnormal Causesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…whether the outcome has occurred before and who or what has caused, is ambiguous. The co-variation between cause and effect has been shown to influence judgments of causal strength (Cheng & Novick, 1991;Harinen, 2017;Kirfel & Lagnado, 2018;Lagnado, Waldmann, Hagmayer, & Sloman, 2007). By introducing a restriction of kitchen devices on Fridays, we implemented a conjunctive causal structure that is temporally limited to a particular weekday.…”

Section: Materials and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kirfel

Lagnado

2021

Cognition

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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 than the normally acting agent. 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 perceive an epistemic advantage of the abnormal agent. In Experiment 2, we find that people do not judge a causal difference if there is no epistemic asymmetry between the agents. In Experiment 3, we replicate these findings for 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. We develop a Bayesian network model that predicts the degree of mental states based on action normality and epistemic states, and find that people infer mental states like desire and intention to a greater extent from abnormal behaviour. We discuss these results in light of current theories and research on people's preference for atypical causes.

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Section: Abnormal Causesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Materials and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kirfel

Lagnado

2021

Cognition

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“…Icard et al (2017) suggest that the perceived causal strength of a cause is a function of its necessity and sufficiency weighted by the normality of the event. Others have argued that the correspondence in normality between cause and effect is what matters for causal selections (Gavanski & Wells, 1989;Harinen, 2017). People select abnormal causes for abnormal effects, and normal causes for normal effects.…”

Section: The Influence Of Norms and Causal Structure On Causal Explanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inference from explanation

Kirfel¹,

Icard²

2020

Preprint

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What do we communicate with causal explanations? Upon being told, "E because C", one might learn that C and E both occurred, and perhaps that there is a causal relationship between C and E. In fact, causal explanations systematically disclose much more than this basic information. Here, we offer a communication-theoretic account of explanation that makes specific predictions about the kinds of inferences people draw from others' explanations. We test these predictions in a case study involving the role of norms and causal structure. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that people infer the normality of a cause from an explanation when they know the underlying causal structure. In Experiment 2, we show that people infer the causal structure from an explanation if they know the normality of the cited cause. We find these patterns both for scenarios that manipulate the statistical and prescriptive normality of events. Finally, we consider how the communicative function of explanations, as highlighted in this series of experiments, may help to elucidate the distinctive roles that normality and causal structure play in causal judgment, paving the way toward a more comprehensive account of causal explanation.

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Section: Abnormal Causesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Materials and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kirfel¹,

Lagnado²

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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 than the normally acting agent. 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 perceive an epistemic advantage of the abnormal agent. In Experiment 2, we find that people do not judge a causal difference if there is no epistemic asymmetry between the agents. In Experiment 3, we replicate these findings for 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. We develop a Bayesian Network model that predicts the degree of mental states based on action normality and epistemic states, and find that people infer mental states like desire and intentions to a greater extent from abnormal behaviour. We discuss these results in light of current theories and research on people’s preference for atypical causes.

show abstract

Normal Causes for Normal Effects: Reinvigorating the Correspondence Hypothesis About Judgments of Actual Causation

Cited by 9 publications

References 26 publications

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

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

Inference from explanation

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

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