Stable causal relationships are better causal relationships

Year of Conference
2016

Type

Conference Proceedings
Abstract

We report two experiments investigating whether people’s judgments about causal relationships are sensitive to the robustness or stability of such relationships across a wide range of background circumstances. We demonstrate that people prefer stable causal relationships even when overall causal strength is held constant, and show that this effect is unlikely to be driven by a causal generalization’s actual scope of application. This documents a previously unacknowledged factor that shapes people’s causal reasoning.

Conference Name
Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Pages
2663-2668
Publisher
Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society
Documents