Psychological Causality Research Articles

The operational paradigm in psychiatry: How valid is it?

One of the criticisms of the operational/diagnostic criteria, generalised since DSM-III, has been that they were shaped solely to achieve the best inter-peer reliability with no considerations for validity. This does not fully reflect reality since throughout the development of the criteria, there was an effort to define and fulfil some validity requirements. However, despite several attempts to create alternative diagnostic systems, there is still a widespread misunderstanding of the epistemological foundations that support this paradigm. In this article, we intend to analyse the epistemological context in which the operational criteria (OC) emerged and some of the validation processes they have undergone since their conception. On the epistemological basis of these operational criteria (OC) the influence of Hempel has been widely discussed. However, the group from St. Louis and, also the DSM-III editors, never openly acknowledged his role and his contribution and revealed other influences such as other medical specialties (that used and validated several OC in the diagnosis of their diseases). On the other hand, contrary to what has often been mentioned there has been a continuous attempt to validate the OC since their conception. In the implementation and development of the operational paradigm, a more instrumental trend was followed, focused on utility, but with successive attempts to achieve realistic validity by searching for biological or psychological causality. The methodologies were initially expert-driven and gradually more data-driven and included some variables external to the construct itself, such as familial aggregation, diagnostic consistency over time, prognostic and other psychometric measures.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

ABSTRACT
 This article presents the analyses of the theoretical foundations of the study of consumer behavior: reference was made to the economic, marketing and psychological approaches. The essence of consumer behavior, psychological features and mechanisms are discussed. The psychological causality of consumer preference and choice is revealed, particularly, the study of positions, motives and needs is of significant importance. In the psychological analysis of the consumer behavior the influence of both psychological and socio-cultural factors is highly important. 
 Today consumers are quite well-informed and they know well what they want. Therefore, marketers should be very careful and prudent when developing a marketing strategy and presenting their brand to the consumers. It can be said that the creation of the best brand depends on to what extent the marketer is familiar with the psychology of consumers. The marketing tricks, such as advertisements, posters, billboards, celebrity endorsements, display, which are used by marketers to present their new products to a wide range of consumers, to attract consumers and buyers, are almost the same and they are used by numerous organizations, manufacturers and marketers. However, successful are those, who can be more informed about the consumers' psychology and the psychological mechanisms of consumer choice.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

ABSTRACT
 This article presents the analyses of the theoretical foundations of the study of consumer behavior: reference was made to the economic, marketing and psychological approaches. The essence of consumer behavior, psychological features and mechanisms are discussed. The psychological causality of consumer preference and choice is revealed, particularly, the study of positions, motives and needs is of significant importance. In the psychological analysis of the consumer behavior the influence of both psychological and socio-cultural factors is highly important. 
 Today consumers are quite well-informed and they know well what they want. Therefore, marketers should be very careful and prudent when developing a marketing strategy and presenting their brand to the consumers. It can be said that the creation of the best brand depends on to what extent the marketer is familiar with the psychology of consumers. The marketing tricks, such as advertisements, posters, billboards, celebrity endorsements, display, which are used by marketers to present their new products to a wide range of consumers, to attract consumers and buyers, are almost the same and they are used by numerous organizations, manufacturers and marketers. However, successful are those, who can be more informed about the consumers' psychology and the psychological mechanisms of consumer choice.

The Relationship between Serum Vitamin D Level and Psychosomatic Symptoms in Females in Mosul City

Background: A widespread severe deficiency of vitamin D (vit D) exists in Iraq, especially among women of reproductive age. Depression or anxiety is related to deficiency of vit D. These patients may present with psychosomatic symptoms which are symptoms with no sufficient organic cause in the body but from psychological causality. The study aimed to investigate the serum level of vit D in females with psychosomatic symptoms residing in Mosul City, Iraq and explore the effect of vitamin D3 (vit D3) supplements for treating psychosomatic symptoms.
 Methods: A total of 73 female patients aged 15–45 years presented with several symptoms. All patients underwent physical examination and psychiatric interviews. Patients with minimal to mild depression were selected. All included patients underwent investigation of first serum vit D level. The supplementation with vitamin D3 was started. The second serum vit D level was investigated at first post-improvement visit.
 Results: In the improved group, the post-supplementation serum vit D level was higher than that before the supplementation (p = 0.00). In addition, the vit D serum difference before and after its supplementation was greater in the improved group than the nonimproved one (p = 0.00). Patients not only experienced improvement in their mood swings, but also recovered from other recorded symptoms such as headache, fatigue, tiredness, and joint pain.
 Conclusion: This study revealed a noticeable association concerning serum levels of 25-OH D and mild depression in addition to psychosomatic symptoms in females living in Mosul City. Supplementation with suitable loading vit D3 dosages improved these symptoms showing a probable causal relationship.

Continuity and Discontinuity between the Psychological World and the Biological World.

In this commentary paper I try to make complementarily more discussion on two question. First, the target paper (Zagaria, Andò, & Zennaro, 2020) points out the lack of continuity in the concepts used in psychology. The authors aim for a rigorous definition which is necessary to rebuild mud figures of psychology, but is that the only direction? Second, the evolutionary psychology seems to allow for a diversity of methodologies, but is there any limitations and possibilities of approaching the origin of the mind from biologically based methods? To answer this question, I went back and examined Freud's earlier studies and Vygotsky's theoretical considerations from the history of psychology. As a result, it was pointed out that the shift from the biological world to the psychological world had a fundamental problem of conversion from quantity to quality. As a clue to its elucidation, I considered on the semiotic mediation, the psychological causality, and the work of apperception.

Сила связи. Сообщение 2. Градации величины корреляции

Purpose: To summarize data on graduation of the effect size on the base of Hill’s first causality criterion ‘strength of association’ on the magnitude of the correlation coefficient (mainly Pearson r).
 Material and methods: Survey of published sources: monographs, handbooks, papers, educational material on statistics in various disciplines (including on-line), etc. (121 references; of which more than 20 textbooks on statistical methods and statistics in psychology and 8 textbooks on epidemiology).
 Results: Estimation of the strength of association by the correlation size is most common in psycho-sociological disciplines and is almost never used in epidemiology (since the establishment of a fact of statistically significant association/correlation in epidemiology is only the initial stage of evidence, unlike the experimental and named disciplines). A number of known scales for r were obtained: the Chaddok scale (R.E. Chaddock) from 1925, which is now apparently not used abroad, but widely represented in the countries of the former USSR, the Cohen scale (J. Cohen) from 1969–1988, reflecting the ‘soft’ criteria of causality in psychology, D.E. Hinkle with co-authors scale (1979–2003) and the Evans scale (J.D. Evans) from 1996. A number of other graduations, published in the singular, are also given. A total of at least 16 different scales of varying degrees were collected for the correlation coefficient r (1925–2019). The information about the value of r for correlations, which should be neglected was presented. Depending on the source, this is r <0.1; r <0.2 or r <0.3. The data on the possibility of transferring graduations from the Pearson coefficient r to the Spearman correlation coefficient and other parameters of the effect size are given. 
 The question of the difference between estimation of strength of association in epidemiology and medicine and in psycho-sociological disciplines is considered. Unlike the second, in epidemiology and medicine a small value of the correlation coefficient does not necessarily mean a small effect size.
 Conclusions: To estimate the value of r one should use the most common and officially established scales, with the exception of the strongly ‘soft’ Cohen scale. The present study can be used as a reference guide on the graduations of effect size on r for a wide variety of observation disciplines.

Preschoolers' Development of Theory of Mind: The Contribution of Understanding Psychological Causality in Stories.

This study investigated the relationship between children’s abilities to understand causal sequences and another’s false belief. In Experiment 1, we tested 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children (n = 28, 28, 27, and 27, respectively) using false belief and picture sequencing tasks involving mechanical, behavioral, and psychological causality. Understanding causal sequences in mechanical, behavioral, and psychological stories was related to understanding other’s false beliefs. In Experiment 2, children who failed the initial false belief task (n = 50) were reassessed 5 months later. High scorers in the sequencing of the psychological stories in Experiment 1 were more likely to pass the standard false belief task than were the low scorers. Conversely, understanding causal sequences in the mechanical and behavioral stories in Experiment 1 did not predict passing the false belief task in Experiment 2. Thus, children may understand psychological causality before they are able to use it to understand false beliefs.

Cultural snapshots: Theory and method

AbstractCausal influences of culture on cognition are challenging to examine scientifically. We here introduce a method to address this challenge.Cultural snapshotsenable scientists to (a) characterize the cultural information commonly and frequently encountered by a collective, (b) examine how such cultural information influences the cognitions of individuals, and (c) draw conclusions about the emergence of shared cognition. Specifically, cultural snapshots are recorded samples of public environments commonly encountered by many people. Television scenes, photographs of public spaces, magazine pages, and social media conversations are all examples of cultural snapshots. Representative sets of cultural snapshots can be coded to index the systematic patterns of information encountered by a collective (i.e.,cultural patterns). These same materials can be used to experimentally manipulate those cultural patterns, allowing scientists to examine cultural influences on cognition and behavior. We here review and provide guidelines for cultural snapshots research, trace cultural snapshots to classic theories of culture, and describe how cultural snapshots balance the constraints of representative design (Brunswik,) with those of causal inference. We then illustrate how this approach is used to address (a) questions of causality in cultural psychology and (b) questions of applicability in social cognition research. We conclude by evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the approach.

Distinguishing Mediational Models and Analyses in Clinical Psychology: Atemporal Associations Do Not Imply Causation.

A popular way to attempt to discern causality in clinical psychology is through mediation analysis. However, mediation analysis is sometimes applied to research questions in clinical psychology when inferring causality is impossible. This practice may soon increase with new, readily available, and easy-to-use statistical advances. Thus, we here provide a heuristic to remind clinical psychological scientists of the assumptions of mediation analyses. We describe recent statistical advances and unpack assumptions of causality in mediation, underscoring the importance of time in understanding mediational hypotheses and analyses in clinical psychology. Example analyses demonstrate that statistical mediation can occur despite theoretical mediation being improbable. We propose a delineation of mediational effects derived from cross-sectional designs into the terms temporal and atemporal associations to emphasize time in conceptualizing process models in clinical psychology. The general implications for mediational hypotheses and the temporal frameworks from within which they may be drawn are discussed.

II—Sebastian Gardner: Psychoanalytic Theory: a Historical Reconstruction

In this paper I sketch a reconstruction of the basic psychoanalytic conception of the mind in terms of two historical resources: the conception of the subject developed in post-Kantian idealism, and Spinoza’s laws of the affects in Part Three of the Ethics. The former, I suggest, supplies the conceptual basis for the psychoanalytic notion of the unconscious, while the latter defines the type of psychological causality of psychoanalytic explanations. The imperfect fit between these two elements, I claim, is reflected in familiar conceptual difficulties surrounding psychoanalytic theory and explanation.

Emerging perception of causality in action-and-reaction sequences from 4 to 6 months of age: Is it domain-specific?

Two experiments (N=136) studied how 4- to 6-month-olds perceive a simple schematic event, seen as goal-directed action and reaction from 3years of age. In our causal reaction event, a red square moved toward a blue square, stopping prior to contact. Blue began to move away before red stopped, so that both briefly moved simultaneously at a distance. Primarily, our study sought to determine from what age infants see the causal structure of this reaction event. In addition, we looked at whether this causal percept depends on an animate style of motion and whether it correlates with tasks assessing goal perception and goal-directed action. Infants saw either causal reactions or noncausal delayed control events in which blue started some time after red stopped. These events involved squares that moved either rigidly or nonrigidly in an apparently animate manner. After habituation to one of the four events, infants were tested on reversal of the habituation event. Spatiotemporal features reversed for all events, but causal roles changed only in reversed reactions. The 6-month-olds dishabituated significantly more to reversal of causal reaction events than to noncausal delay events, whereas younger infants reacted similarly to reversal of both. Thus, perceptual causality for reaction events emerges by 6months of age, a younger age than previously reported but, crucially, the same age at which perceptual causality for launch events has emerged in prior research. On our second question, animate/inanimate motion had no effect at any age, nor did significant correlations emerge with our additional tasks assessing goal perception or goal-directed object retrieval. Available evidence, here and elsewhere, is as compatible with a view that infants initially see A affecting B, without differentiation into physical or psychological causality, as with the standard assumption of distinct physical/psychological causal perception.

Causes of Behavioral Processes: An Interview with Mario A. Bunge

Mario A. Bunge is one of the most prominent philosophers and humanists of our time. His vast record of publications has covered, among others, epistemology, ontology, ethics, philosophy of natural and social sciences, philosophy of technology, and philosophy of mind. A topic that intersects many of these areas and is recurrent in Bunge’s work is causality. His analyses of the causal principle, and the redefinition of determinism into near-determinism have been applied to different philosophical issues that range from the causal role of neuronal functioning to the laws of social phenomena. Bunge has criticized functionalism, cognitivism, computationalism, behaviourism, and idealism in their attempt to explain human and non-human behaviour. This article results from an extensive interview held with Dr. Bunge in which we discussed a variety of conceptual issues related to the notions of causality and explanation in psychology.

Causas de los Procesos Comportamentales: Un diálogo con Mario Bunge

Mario A. Bunge is one of the most prominent philosophers and humanists of our time. His vast record of publications has covered, among others, epistemology, ontology, ethics, philosophy of natural and social sciences, philosophy of technology, and philosophy of mind. A topic that intersects many of these areas and is recurrent in Bunge’s work is causality. His analyses of the causal principle, and the redefinition of determinism into near-determinism have been applied to different philosophical issues that range from the causal role of neuronal functioning to the laws of social phenomena. Bunge has criticized functionalism, cognitivism, computationalism, behaviourism, and idealism in their attempt to explain human and non-human behaviour. This article results from an extensive interview held with Dr. Bunge in which we discussed a variety of conceptual issues related to the notions of causality and explanation in psychology.

Effects of perceived causality on perceptions of persons who stutter

This study examined the effects of the perceived cause of stuttering on perceptions of persons who stutter (PWS) using a 7-item social distance scale, a 25-item adjective pair scale and a 2-item visual analogue scale. Two hundred and four university students rated vignettes which varied on describing a PWS with different causalities for stuttering (psychological, genetic, or unknown). Ratings differed significantly according to assigned causality. The vignette with the stuttering due to psychological causes was rated more negatively on 14 adjective pairs and the Social Distance Scale Index when compared to the ratings of vignettes with stuttering caused by either genetic or unknown causes. Interestingly, there were no significant differences between ratings of the vignettes attributing stuttering to either genetic or unknown causes. Neither familiarity with PWS nor the perceived curability of stuttering had any significant association to the ratings. Implications of findings regarding negative stereotypes, stigmatization and perceived causality for PWS are discussed. Educational objectives : Readers will be able to describe and explain: (1) research regarding negative stereotypes and stigma associated with stuttering, (2) research about attribution theory and stigma, (3) two methods used to evaluate stereotypes and stigma in adults, and (4) the negative effects on ratings of PWS due to psychological causality.

Affective Historiography: Schindler's List, Melodrama and Historical Representation

With Hayden White's notion of the "content of the form" of narrative as a starting point, this article argues that the melodramatic form of Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993) constitutes a distinct mode of historical representation that must be critically accounted for alongside the manifest content of the film. This argument is made by linking Linda Williams' discussion of melodrama as an operative mode concerned more with the emotional retrieval of innocence than with rational psychological causality to Peter Brooks's invocation of Freudian case studies to understand how narratives can work towards the revelation of an original "truth" whose ontological status is unclear. Through this integration of Williams and Brooks, the melodramatic quality at play in Schindler's List , which is often read as a liability against the film's representation of history as it affords access to registers of emotional excess that cannot be explained through narrative logic, can be understood as an essential feature of the film's historiography. Moreover, given this tendency towards emotional excess rather than rational causality, this article suggests that the melodramatic historical form can productively address (although not necessarily resolve) the epistemological challenges posed by the Holocaust to representational rendering.

Gerald Young, Andrew W. Kane, Keith Nicholson, Causality of Psychological Injury: Presenting Evidence in Court. Review: Causality in Psychology and Law

Gerald Young, Andrew W. Kane, Keith Nicholson, Causality of Psychological Injury: Presenting Evidence in Court. Review: Causality in Psychology and Law

Causality and Causation in Law, Medicine, Psychiatry, and Psychology: Progression or Regression?

In this article, I review recent developments in the areas of law, medicine, psychiatry, and psychology concerning causality and causation. I analyze the validity of the 2008 edition of the American Medical Association (AMA)’s guides to the evaluation of permanent impairment and its accompanying volume on causation. I conclude with recommendations for a synthetic approach to causality in the legal field and a more consistent model of impairment in the mental health one. The AMA’s book on medical causation needs careful revision.

Why Else Does Jenny Run? Young Children's Extended Psychological Explanations

A method for eliciting extended explanations was used to evaluate predictions from the “theory-theory” account of developing psychological reasoning. Children were repeatedly asked to explain the actions or emotions of story characters with false beliefs. Questioning elicited false belief attributions in half of 3-year-olds (Study 1, N = 16, age M = 3;6) and most 4-year-olds who failed belief prediction tasks (Study 2, N = 30, M = 4;5). In Study 3, 30 prediction failers (M = 5;1) gave significantly more false belief explanations for emotions than for actions. Across the studies, desire and emotion explanations emerged early and often, reflecting the primacy of these constructs in the children's understanding of psychological causality. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for developmental mechanism.

Age-related differences in how children with ADHD understand their condition: Biological or psychological causality?

Substantial evidence suggests that young children reason about illnesses using biological causal principles and that, with increasing age, children provide more explicit accounts of mechanisms underlying different conditions. To investigate these claims, sixteen 7–8 year-old children and sixteen 11–12 year-old children with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) completed an open-ended interview about the etiology and treatment of ADHD, aggressive behavior, and colds. Younger children used either biological or psychological principles to explain ADHD, while older children used biological causality or integrated biological and psychological principles into explanations. Children at both ages used biological causality to explain colds, and intentional, psychological causality to explain aggression. Older children provided more complex accounts of the mechanisms underlying conditions. The findings suggest that school-aged children utilize principles spanning different domains to explain conditions with physical and behavioral symptoms. Implications for domain-specific accounts of cognitive development and for the care of children with ADHD are discussed.

Perceptual causality in children.

Three experiments considered the development of perceptual causality in children from 3 to 9 years of age (N = 176 in total). Adults tend to see cause and effect even in schematic, two-dimensional motion events: Thus, if square A moves toward B, which moves upon contact, they report that A launches B--physical causality. If B moves before contact, adults report that B tries to escape from A--social or psychological causality. A brief pause between movements eliminates such impressions. Even infants in the first year of life are sensitive to causal structure in both contact and no-contact events, but previous research with talking-age children found poor verbal reports. The present experiments used a picture-based forced-choice task to reduce linguistic demands. Observers saw eight different animations involving squares A and B. Events varied in whether or not these agents made contact; whether or not there was a delay at the closest point; and whether they moved rigidly or with a rhythmic, nonrigid "caterpillar" motion. Participants of all ages assigned events with contact to the physical domain and events without contact to the psychological domain. In addition, participants of all ages chose causality more often for events without delay than with delay, but these events became more distinct over the preschool range. The manipulation of agent motion had only minor and inconsistent effects across studies, even though children of all ages considered only the nonrigid motion to be animal-like. These results agree with the view that perceptual causality is available early in development.