The Effect Of Anchoring On Single Causal Judgment When Information Presented In The Forms Of Summation

Elemental causal judgment refers to judgment about connection strength between a single cause and an effect. It is an essential issue in the area of causal cognition, which is foundational for learning complex causal relation.In causal judgment tasks, participants are often required to assess causal strength on a rating scale(e.g.0-100 ). However, their criterion for judgment may be fuzzy and changefully. The present study set three standard stimuli as the anchors in the instruction to overcome the problem mentioned above. Three experiments examined the possible influence of anchoring, cause types( generative causes and preventive causes) and modes of external representations of causal information on causal judgment when information was presented in the form of summation. Meanwhile, it discussed issues of weights of different cells, strategies used by participants in different conditions. The results showed:1. When information was presented in the forms of summation, anchors provided in the instruction had impact on human causal judgment. The judgments made by participants ,who were provided with anchors during judgment , were always more centralized and closer to the objective values.2. In generative causes, forms of external representation of causal information had effect on causal judgment given no anchors. If the information was presented in the form of histogram, participants' judgments were more accuracy, compared with the form of table. In preventive causes, forms of external representation of causal information made no difference in causal judgment.3.There was individual difference in judgmental strategies. When causal information was presented in the form of histogram, participants trended to use strategies related to evidence evaluation.