People's Understanding Of Causality Is Inevitable Or Probable

Causality is prevalent in our daily life and is of great importance.However,there has been a controversy in researches about causality.The physicalist models,counterfactual model and mental model theory support the deterministic account,which proposed that when a cause occur,the effect will definitely occur.The probabilistic contrast model,Power PC theory and associative theory support the probabilistic account,which proposed that when a cause occur,the effect does not necessarily occur.The deterministic account does not tolerate counterexamples,while the probabilistic account can tolerate a few counterexamples.Experiment 1 examined people's understanding of individual causality.Participants in experimental group performed cause-condition judgment task,which can promote their analysis,before individual causality judgment task.Participants in control group only performed individual causality judgment task.The results showed that people did not have a dominant understanding of individual causality.About half of the participants in both experimental group and control group thought that the individual causality is deterministic,while others thought that the individual causality is probabilistic.We classified the answer basis of experimental group's participants and found that the intuitive basis of deterministic answers were significantly higher than that of probabilistic answers.Thus,we assumed that there are individual differences in the understanding of individual causality.Participants whose intuitive thinking predominated could not consider other possibilities,even though they had done cause-condition judgment task before individual causality judgment task.Therefore,they thought that individual causality is deterministic.Participants whose deliberate thinking predominated could consider counterexamples,even though they had not done cause-condition judgment task before individual causality judgment task.Therefore,they thought that individual causality is probabilistic.Experiment 2 examined the reproducibility of causality,that is,how people predict causality through an individual causal event.Participants in experimental group firstly performed cause-condition judgment task and then performed three effect prediction tasks in which cause,enabling conditions,and both occur.Participants in control group only performed one effect prediction task in which cause occur.Mental model theory assumes that the effect will definitely occur when cause occurs,and the effect does not necessarily occur when enabling conditions occur.The results showed that most participants predicted that when the cause occurs,the effect does not necessarily occur whether or not they have done the cause-condition judgment task.Thus,the results were inconsistent with mental model theory.The results also showed that the causality is reproducible.Most participants predicted that the effect will occur when both the cause and the enabling condition occur,and does not necessarily occur when the cause and enabling conditions respectively occur.Experiment 3 examined people's understanding of general causality.The results of modality judgment task showed that most participants thought that the general causality is probabilistic,whether in specific or abstract context.Participants tended to be more conservative in the abstract context.The results of the possibility judgment task showed that,in both specific and abstract context,most participants thought that the effect does not necessarily occur and may not occur when the cause occur.It was suggested that most people think that general causality is probabilistic.The results of our study do not support the deterministic account,but also do not fully support probabilistic account.The results of our study showed that most people think that the specific causality,abstract causality and general causality are probabilistic.About half of people think that individual causality is probabilistic while the others think that individual causality is deterministic.