Norms Affect Prospective Causal Judgments
Abstract
People more frequently select norm‐violating factors, relative to norm‐conforming ones, as the cause of some outcome. Until recently, this abnormal‐selection effect has been studied using retrospective vignette‐based paradigms. We use a novel set of video stimuli to investigate this effect for prospective causal judgments—that is, judgments about the cause of some future outcome. Four experiments show that people more frequently select norm‐violating factors, relative to norm‐conforming ones, as the cause of some future outcome. We show that the abnormal‐selection effects are not primarily explained by the perception of agency (Experiment 4). We discuss these results in relation to recent efforts to model causal judgment.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2021
- Source ID
- 10.1111/cogs.12931
Entities
People
- Felipe De Brigard
- Kevin O’neill
- Paul Bello
- Paul Henne
- Sangeet Khemlani
Organizations
- Duke University
- Lake Forest College
- United States Naval Research Laboratory