title: The texture of causal construals: Domain-specific biases shape causal inferences from discourse.
abstract: We conducted five sets of experiments asking whether psychological and physical events are construed in broadly different manners concerning the underlying textures of their causes. In Experiments 1a-1d, we found a robust tendency to estimate fewer causes (but not effects) for psychological than for physical events; Experiment 2 showed a similar pattern of results when participants were asked to generate hypothetical causes and effects; Experiment 3 revealed a greater tendency to ascribe linear chains of causes (but not effects) to physical events; Experiment 4 showed that the expectation of linear chains was related to intuitions about deterministic processes; and Experiment 5 showed that simply framing a given ambiguous event in psychological versus physical terms is sufficient to induce changes in the patterns of causal inferences. Adults therefore consistently show a tendency to think about psychological and physical events as being embedded in different kinds of causal structures.
authors.affiliation: Département d'Études Cognitives and Institut Jean Nicod, UMR 8129, Pavillon Jardin, École Normale Supérieure, CNRS, PSL University , 29 rue d'Ulm, F-75005, Paris, France. stricklandbrent@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Brent
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Strickland
authors.affiliation: Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Ike
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Silver
authors.affiliation: Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Frank C
authors.initials: FC
authors.lastname: Keil
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Causal reasoning; Domain specificity; Event representation