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{
    "pk": 25513,
    "title": "How, whether, why: Causal judgments as counterfactual contrasts",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "How do people make causal judgments? Here, we propose\na counterfactual simulation model (CSM) of causal judgment\nthat unifies different views on causation. The CSM predicts\nthat people’s causal judgments are influenced by whether a\ncandidate cause made a difference to whether the outcome occurred\nas well as to how it occurred. We show how whethercausation\nand how-causation can be implemented in terms of\ndifferent counterfactual contrasts defined over the same intuitive\ngenerative model of the domain. We test the model in an\nintuitive physics domain where people make judgments about\ncolliding billiard balls. Experiment 1 shows that participants’\ncounterfactual judgments about what would have happened if\none of the balls had been removed, are well-explained by an\napproximately Newtonian model of physics. In Experiment 2,\nparticipants judged to what extent two balls were causally responsible\nfor a third ball going through a gate or missing the\ngate. As predicted by the CSM, participants’ judgments increased\nwith their belief that a ball was a whether-cause, a\nhow-cause, as well as sufficient for bringing about the outcome.",
    "language": "eng",
    "license": {
        "name": "",
        "short_name": "",
        "text": null,
        "url": ""
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "causality; counterfactuals; mental simulation; intuitive\nphysics."
        }
    ],
    "section": "Papers",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/74b7k69g",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Tobias",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Gerstenberg",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Noah",
            "middle_name": "D",
            "last_name": "Goodman",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Department of Psychology, Stanford University",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "David",
            "middle_name": "A",
            "last_name": "Lagnado",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Experimental Psychology, University College London",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Joshua",
            "middle_name": "B",
            "last_name": "Tenenbaum",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": null,
    "date_accepted": null,
    "date_published": "2015-01-01T18:00:00Z",
    "render_galley": null,
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "PDF",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25513/galley/15137/download/"
        }
    ]
}