Spontaneous causal inferences

Three studies examine the hypothesis that people spontaneously (i.e., unintentionally and without awareness of doing so) infer causes (the Spontaneous Causal Inference, or SCI, hypothesis). Using a cued-recall paradigm, Study 1 examines whether SCIs occur and Study 2 allows for a comparison between implicitly inferred and explicitly mentioned causes. Study 3 examines whether SCIs can be fully explained in terms of spreading activation to general, abstract schemes. It is suggested that STIs (e.g., Winter & Uleman, 1984), and spontaneous predicting inferences (e.g., McKoon & Ratclif, 1986a,1986b), may be better understood in their relation to SCIs. 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. Inferring causal relations among the constituent elements of this world, be they physical objects or living things, is one of the most important tasks the cognitive system has to perform (e.g., Heider, 1944; Kant, 1965; Kelley, 1967; Michotte, 1963; Weiner, 1985). Moreover, in a dynamic world, full of shifting conditions and sudden surprises, inferring causes is a task that the cognitive system has to perform very frequently and very swiftly. This frequent need for rapid causal understanding might place an overwhelming demand for cognitive resources. Since these resources are limited (Kahneman, 1973), it seems that some of the work related to inferring causality has to be done in a way that demands less cognitive resources, that is—automatically. Previous research regarding the automaticity of causal attribution has focused on its efficiency, that is—on whether causal attributions can occur with minimal cognitive resources. At present, there is a consensus on the fact that the characterization of a behavior can occur with minimal cognitive resources (e.g., the characterization ‘‘this was a dishonest act’’ upon seeing Ap shoplifting; Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988; Trope, 1986). There is less agreement, however, on what other steps of causal attribution—if any—can occur with minimal cognitive resources. In this paper, we focus on another aspect of the automaticity of causal inferences; namely, spontaneity. An inference is defined here as spontaneous if: (1) it is not suggested by the experimental instructions, (2) people are usually unaware of their intentions to make it, and (3) people are usually unaware of the inference itself (see Uleman, 1989). As argued above, the importance of causal inferences on the one hand, and the limited capacity of the conscious cognitive system on the other hand, lead us to hypothesize that causal inferences can be spontaneous. Previous research on non-instructed causal attribution Previous research, which used a more lenient notion of spontaneity, examined whether causal attributions can occur without explicit instructions to make them (criterion 1 above; see, e.g., Hastie, 1984; Krull & Dill, 1998; Lau, 1984; Liu, Karasawa, & Weiner, 1992; Malle & Knobe, 1997; Roese & Olson, 1995; Sanna & Turely, 1996; Weiner, 1985). As noted by Kanazawa (1992), however, participants in these earlier studies were specifically directed to ask themselves questions, and hence, the evidence gathered cannot conclusively speak to the spontaneity of causal attributions. With this problem in mind, Kanazawa then conducted a new set of studies, in which participants were asked to retell a scenario they Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 515–522 www.academicpress.com Journal of Experimental Social Psychology This research was partly supported by a Fulbright post-doctoral grant to Hassin and by a Public Health Service Grant R01-MH60767 to Bargh. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (R.R. Hassin). 0022-1031/02/$ see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. PII: S0022 -1031 (02 )00016-1 had been presented with. Participants were asked to ‘‘reconstruct [the story] in your own head’’ and to retell the story such that ‘‘[a] friend can fully understand the events’’ (p. 664). Conscious, effortful activities of this kind are likely to be affected by lay theories about the characteristics of ‘‘good stories’’ and ‘‘full understanding.’’ These lay theories may suggest, for example, that an important aspect of (re)telling stories is to explain why unexpected events have occurred. If this were the case, and there is nothing in Kanazawa (1992) to suggest otherwise, then studies such as Kanazawa’s cannot conclusively examine the question of (lenient) spontaneity either. Inferences during narrative comprehension In a related field, psychologists interested in text comprehension are examining inferences that occur during narrative comprehension. An important part of this literature revolves around inferences that occur during ‘‘casual’’ reading conditions, that is—when reading is not accompanied by internally or externally induced goals to infer underlying structures (for overviews see Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994; McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992). The consensus in this field seems to be that when people engage in casually reading narrative texts, they make inferences that are important for achieving coherence (e.g., Graesser et al., 1994; McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992; Trabasso & Suh, 1993). Importantly, one of the main factors that determines coherence is causality: out of the seven types of inferences that help us in achieving coherence, at least four are directly related to causal structure (Graesser et al., 1994). The consensus regarding the occurrences of causal inferences on the one hand, and the emphasis on examining ‘‘casual’’ reading on the other, may suggest that, as argued above, people may sometimes engage in spontaneous causal inferences. To the best of our knowledge, however, spontaneous inferences of causes (vs. causal structure) were not examined in this literature. Moreover, after reviewing the literature on inferences of causal structure, McKoon and Ratcliff (1992, p. 462) conclude that the evidence for their occurrence is still not conclusive (for an elaborate discussion of these issues see Hassin, 2002). Spontaneous trait inferences Perhaps, the most relevant literature for the current purposes is that regarding spontaneous trait inferences (e.g., Winter & Uleman, 1984), where the spontaneity of inferences has been repeatedly demonstrated. So, for example, this literature shows that upon reading sentences like ‘‘Henk refused to drink a new brand of beer,’’ people spontaneously infer traits (in this case—Picky). Inferences of this kind occur when participants are asked to memorize sentences, when they read such sentences as distractors in another ‘‘main’’ task, and when they are merely asked to familiarize themselves with the sentences (Uleman, 1999; Uleman, Newman, & Moskowitz, 1996; see also Skowronski et al., 1998). One of the prominent ways to think of traits is as internal causes, which drive people to behave in the certain ways that they do (e.g., Henk refused to drink the beer because he is picky). Hence, STIs may be viewed as specific sub-category of the hypothesized SCIs, that is inferences of internal causes. Overview of the present research The spontaneity of causal inferences is examined in three studies. The first provides a demonstration of spontaneous causal inferences and the second extends this finding by comparing explicitly mentioned and implied causes. The third study examines whether spreading of activation to schemes can account for SCIs.