White P A
University of Wales College of Cardiff.
Mem Cognit. 1995 Mar;23(2):243-54. doi: 10.3758/bf03197225.
There is a tradition of models of causal judgment in which causes and other causal roles are defined and identified in terms of empirical patterns of association with effects. In the present experiments, results conflicting with the predictions of such models were obtained. In one experiment, subjects judged that an interpretation in which a factor constantly present was identified as the cause was more likely than was an interpretation in which a perfect positive covariate was identified as the cause. In a second experiment, possible effects of prior beliefs about covariation were controlled and similar findings were obtained in two out of three scenarios. These results favor the idea that people make causal judgments by applying preexisting beliefs framed in terms of causal concepts, such as causal powers, and in ways that cannot be accounted for by models in the empiricist tradition.
在因果判断模型的传统中，原因及其他因果角色是根据与结果的经验性关联模式来定义和识别的。在当前实验中，获得了与这类模型预测相冲突的结果。在一项实验中，受试者判断，将一个始终存在的因素认定为原因的解释，比将一个完全正相关变量认定为原因的解释更有可能。在第二项实验中，对关于共变的先验信念的可能影响进行了控制，并且在三个场景中的两个场景中获得了类似的结果。这些结果支持这样一种观点，即人们通过应用以因果概念（如因果力）构建的预先存在的信念来做出因果判断，且其方式无法用经验主义传统中的模型来解释。
