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Quantitative causal selection patterns in token causation.

ABSTRACT: When many events contributed to an outcome, people consistently judge some more causal than others, based in part on the prior probabilities of those events. For instance, when a tree bursts into flames, people judge the lightning strike more of a cause than the presence of oxygen in the air-in part because oxygen is so common, and lightning strikes are so rare. These effects, which play a major role in several prominent theories of token causation, have largely been studied through qualitative manipulations of the prior probabilities. Yet, there is good reason to think that people's causal judgments are on a continuum-and relatively little is known about how these judgments vary quantitatively as the prior probabilities change. In this paper, we measure people's causal judgment across parametric manipulations of the prior probabilities of antecedent events. Our experiments replicate previous qualitative findings, and also reveal several novel patterns that are not well-described by existing theories.

SUBMITTER: Morris A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6675094 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Quantitative causal selection patterns in token causation.

Morris Adam A Phillips Jonathan J Gerstenberg Tobias T Cushman Fiery F

PloS one 20190801 8

When many events contributed to an outcome, people consistently judge some more causal than others, based in part on the prior probabilities of those events. For instance, when a tree bursts into flames, people judge the lightning strike more of a cause than the presence of oxygen in the air-in part because oxygen is so common, and lightning strikes are so rare. These effects, which play a major role in several prominent theories of token causation, have largely been studied through qualitative ...[more]

PMID: 31369584

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Project description:BackgroundThe economic selection hypothesis, which argues that the initial economic situation determines both subsequent health and economic conditions, has been drawn into the debate on causation-selection issues. This study aims to construct a path model with self-rated health and depression score of older adults as health outcomes to measure and compare the social causation forces of wealth accumulation, social selection forces of adulthood health, and economic selection forces of childhood economics, and to examine their gender disparities.MethodsData was obtained from a sample of 19613 older adults aged 45 years or above from the 2014 life history survey and the 2015 routine follow-up survey of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. Structural equation modeling analysis was conducted employing the full information maximum likelihood estimation method.ResultsThe presence of social causation, social selection, and economic selection were all statistically supported. In self-rated health, social selection forces held the dominant position, while social causation forces were comparable to economic selection forces. In depression score, social selection still exhibited stronger forces than economic selection, but social causation had forces close to social selection and greater than economic selection. The forces of the three hypotheses in self-rated health did not significantly change with gender, but social causation exerted mightier forces than economic selection within the male group, unlike the female group. The forces of economic selection in depression score were greater in females than males and no significant differences were observed among the forces of the three hypotheses in the female group.ConclusionsSocial causation, social selection, and economic selection operate simultaneously on the self-rated health and depression score of older adults. However, the force magnitudes of the three hypotheses and/or their rankings differ by health outcomes and gender.

Dataset Information

Quantitative causal selection patterns in token causation.

Publications

Quantitative causal selection patterns in token causation.

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