Abstract
A current issue about causal attribution is whether people take simple contrast-factor attributions or complex joint attributions in contrast situations. For example, a stone does not dissolve in water and a piece of salt dissolves in water. That the piece of salt dissolves in water is due to: (A) the influence of the piece of salt; (B) the influence of the water; (C) the joint influence of the piece of salt and the water. We propose a mechanism-based sufficiency account for such questions. It argues that causal attributions are guided by mechanism-based explanatory sufficiency, and people prefer a mechanism-based attribution with explanatory sufficiency. This account predicts the sufficient joint attribution (the C option), whereas the conventional covariation approach predicts the contrast-factor attribution (the A option). Two experiments investigated whether contrast situations affect causal attributions for compound causation with explicit mechanism information and simple causation without explicit mechanism information, respectively. Both experiments found that in both the presence and absence of contrast situations, the majority of participants preferred sufficient joint attributions to simple contrast-factor attributions regardless of whether explicit mechanism information was present, and contrast situations did not affect causal attributions. These findings favor the mechanism-based sufficiency account rather than the covariation approach and the complexity account. In contrast situations, the predominance of joint attributions implies that explanatory complexity affects causal attributions by the modulation of explanatory sufficiency, and people prefer mechanism-based joint attributions that provide sufficient explanations for effects. The present findings are beyond the existing approaches to causal attributions.
Highlights
In everyday life, people often need to make causal attributions in contrast situations
The majority of participants judged that the effect is due to the joint force of the current and the wind, showing sufficient joint attributions
Experiment 1 found that for a compound causation with explicit mechanism information, participants tended to attribute an effect to the joint influence of two agents on a patient
Summary
In everyday life (social and physical scenarios), people often need to make causal attributions in contrast situations. We think that the influence of explanatory sufficiency will trump the influence of explanatory simplicity, because a good causal attribution should primarily be sufficient for the effect This prediction is suggested by the recent finding that for a causal explanation question without contrasts, people prefer complex explanations invoking two independent causes to simple explanations invoking one of the two causes because the former are more sufficient than the latter (Zemla et al, 2017). For the wood question, when using the three-option response format involving the joint option, the mechanism-based sufficiency account predicts that people will prefer the joint option to the two single-factor options, because the joint option is a sufficient explanation, whereas the other two options are insufficient explanations. No previous studies have systematically investigated whether people prefer complex joint attributions to simple contrast-factor attributions in contrast situations (Alicke et al, 2015; Hilton, 2017; Johnson and Ahn, 2017). Experiment 2 further examined causal attribution in contrast situations with no concrete mechanism information
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