title: Making sense of (exceptional) causal relations. A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic study.
abstract: In order to make sense of the world, humans tend to see causation almost everywhere. Although most causal relations may seem straightforward, they are not always construed in the same way cross-culturally. In this study, we investigate concepts of "chance," "coincidence," or "randomness" that refer to assumed relations between intention, action, and outcome in situations, and we ask how people from different cultures make sense of such non-law-like connections. Based on a framework proposed by Alicke (2000), we administered a task that aims to be a neutral tool for investigating causal construals cross-culturally and cross-linguistically. Members of four different cultural groups, rural Mayan Yucatec and Tseltal speakers from Mexico and urban students from Mexico and Germany, were presented with a set of scenarios involving various types of causal and non-causal relations and were asked to explain the described events. Three links varied as to whether they were present or not in the scenarios: Intention-to-Action, Action-to-Outcome, and Intention-to-Outcome. Our results show that causality is recognized in all four cultural groups. However, how causality and especially non-law-like relations are interpreted depends on the type of links, the cultural background and the language used. In all three groups, Action-to-Outcome is the decisive link for recognizing causality. Despite the fact that the two Mayan groups share similar cultural backgrounds, they display different ideologies regarding concepts of non-law-like relations. The data suggests that the concept of "chance" is not universal, but seems to be an explanation that only some cultural groups draw on to make sense of specific situations. Of particular importance is the existence of linguistic concepts in each language that trigger ideas of causality in the responses from each cultural group.
authors.affiliation: Linguistics, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social Mexico City, Mexico.
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Le Guen
authors.affiliation: Georg-Elias-Müller-Institute of Psychology, University of Gottingen Gottingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Jana
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Samland
authors.affiliation: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Hamburg Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Friedrich
authors.affiliation: Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hanus
authors.affiliation: Language Acquisition, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Penelope
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Brown
keywords: causality; chance; coincidence; cross-cultural cognition; intentionality