Causal attribution: insights from developmental, cross-cultural work on social and physical reasoning

This series of studies examines the relationship between causal inference and attribution from a developmental and cross-cultural perspective. In the first study, we consider how children at the ages of four and six reason about person by situation covariation information (Kelley, 1967), both younger than previously demonstrated trait biases or spontaneously using trait words. We then compare children's explanations of people's behavior to the actual behavioral evidence. Next, we extend the paradigm to include physical causation and the potential overhypotheses that guide the formation of domain specific reasoning. We will determine whether there are domain differences in perceiving virtually identical data construed as physical events or intentional actions. And finally, in the last study, we examine the role of culture in shaping the developmental trajectory of attributional style. As in physical causal inference, social causal inference combines covariational evidence and prior knowledge. We can use the tools of causal inference to understand how culturally-mediated prior beliefs affect the construal of person-by-situation information in a domain specific manner and trace the origins of attributional biases in adults.