Causal reasoning: the ‘magical number’ three

Causal reasoning: the 'magical number' three.

Before you continue reading this column, I would like you to ponder for a while about the possible causes of any of the following phenomena: human altruism, the growth of scientific know ledge, the increase in the number of divorces in Western societies and the fall of comm unism in Europe. In case you are from my region of the world, you might also include the causes of two other events: the d...

Response to "Causal reasoning: the 'magical number' three".

The Plausible Impossible: Causal Constraints on Magical Reasoning

A common intuition, often captured in fiction, is that some impossible events (e.g., levitating a stone) are “more impossible” than others (e.g., levitating a feather). We investigated the source of this intuition, hypothesizing that graded notions of impossibility arise from explanatory considerations logically precluded by the violation at hand but still taken into account. Studies 1-2 involv...

The Magical Number Seven

My problem is that I have been persecuted by an integer. For seven years this number has followed me around, has intruded in my most private data, and has assaulted me from the pages of our most public journals. This number assumes a variety of disguises, being sometimes a little larger and sometimes a little smaller than usual, but never changing so much as to be unrecognizable. The persistenc...

The explanatory structure of unexplainable events: Causal constraints on magical reasoning.

A common intuition, often captured in fiction, is that some impossible events (e.g., levitating a stone) are "more impossible" than others (e.g., levitating a feather). We investigated the source of this intuition, hypothesizing that graded notions of impossibility arise from explanatory considerations logically precluded by the violation at hand but still taken into account. Studies 1-4 involv...