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Effects of Causal Structure on Decisions About Where to Intervene on Causal Systems
Author(s) -
Edwards Brian J.,
Burnett Russell C.,
Keil Frank C.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1111/cogs.12210
Subject(s) - psychological intervention , causal chain , causal model , causal analysis , causal structure , affect (linguistics) , root (linguistics) , psychology , term (time) , causal reasoning , mechanism (biology) , social psychology , cognitive psychology , econometrics , cognition , economics , mathematics , communication , statistics , linguistics , physics , philosophy , epistemology , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , psychiatry
We investigated how people design interventions to affect the outcomes of causal systems. We propose that the abstract structural properties of a causal system, in addition to people's content and mechanism knowledge, influence decisions about how to intervene. In Experiment 1, participants preferred to intervene at specific locations (immediate causes, root causes) in a causal chain regardless of which content variables occupied those positions. In Experiment 2, participants were more likely to intervene on root causes versus immediate causes when they were presented with a long‐term goal versus a short‐term goal. These results show that the structural properties of a causal system can guide the design of interventions.