title: The causal structure of utility conditionals.
abstract: The psychology of reasoning is increasingly considering agents' values and preferences, achieving greater integration with judgment and decision making, social cognition, and moral reasoning. Some of this research investigates utility conditionals, ''if p then q'' statements where the realization of p or q or both is valued by some agents. Various approaches to utility conditionals share the assumption that reasoners make inferences from utility conditionals based on the comparison between the utility of p and the expected utility of q. This article introduces a new parameter in this analysis, the underlying causal structure of the conditional. Four experiments showed that causal structure moderated utility-informed conditional reasoning. These inferences were strongly invited when the underlying structure of the conditional was causal, and significantly less so when the underlying structure of the conditional was diagnostic. This asymmetry was only observed for conditionals in which the utility of q was clear, and disappeared when the utility of q was unclear. Thus, an adequate account of utility-informed inferences conditional reasoning requires three components: utility, probability, and causal structure.
authors.affiliation: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Université de Toulouse, France. bonnefon@univ-tlse2.fr
authors.forename: Jean-François
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Bonnefon
authors.forename: Steven A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Sloman
mesh_terms: D001245:Association Learning; D015984:Causality; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D011337:Probability Learning; D012660:Semantics; D055815:Young Adult