Conjunctive Explanations: The Effect of Comparison of the Target Episode to a Contrasting Background Instance
Ann L. McGill · Social Cognition · 1990
People's preferences for causal explanations are examined in light of recent research on the operation of the causal background in the production of causal explanations. An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that people will be less likely to provide conjunctive explanations for an event when they are given an explicit background instance that can be compared to the target episode and when conjunctions are composed of common and distinctive features. However, this result is shown to depend on the type of causal question presented to subjects. Results for subjects who were asked to rate whether factors were among those that influenced the event replicated previous findings on subjects' relatively greater preference for conjunctive versus simple explanations. The strength of the conjunctive effect was greatly reduced when subjects were asked to rate factors as explanations for the occurrence and when they were asked to provide explanations of their own. Implications of the finding that people's causal judgments may depend on the type of causal question presented are discussed for future research in causal reasoning.