Causality, Normality, and Sampling Propensity

We offer an account of the role of normality—both statistical and prescriptive—in judgments of actual causation. Using only standard tools from the literature on causal cognition, we argue that the phenomenon can be explained simply on the assumption that people stochastically sample (counterfactual) scenarios in a way that reflects normality. We show that a formalization of this idea, giving rise to a novel measure of causal strength, can account for some of the most puzzling qualitative patterns uncovered in recent experimental work.