Causal attributions in the explanation of alcohol-related accidents.
This paper discusses issues related to the cognitive and communicational activity of ascribing a causal role to alcohol use in accidents. It is argued that in addition to the empirical relationships to be explained causal attribution is limited by two other types of empirical contingencies: the cognitive processing of information available for causal attribution, and the representation of this information in language (encoding and decoding as part of communication). Only the latter two types of restrictions in causal attribution are discussed, since its logical requirements are covered by well known methodological principles. On the linguistic and communicative side, limitations and biases in causal ascription are introduced by (1) the three central concepts ('alcohol', 'cause', 'accidents') due to properties inherent in language; (2) the (often implicit) selection of boundary conditions; (3) heuristic inference rules; and (4) the tendency towards thematic closure in describing and explaining phenomena. It is suggested that social, psychological and interactional causal processes have been overlooked in attributing causal links between alcohol use, hazardous behaviour and accidents.
Pernanen
K
K
Department of Social Medicine, Uppsala University, Sweden.
D000059:Accidents / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000009:adverse effects*; D015984:Causality; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D010684:Philosophy