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Judging interevent relations: from cause to effect and from effect to cause
L J Van Hamme1, S F Kao, E A Wasserman
1University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242.
Memory & Cognition
|November 1, 1993
Summary
College students making predictive judgments discounted moderately correlated stimuli when rivals were stronger. However, diagnostic judgments showed no such stimulus competition effect, impacting causal attribution models.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Decision Science
- Medical Judgment
Background:
- Stimulus competition influences how individuals weigh evidence.
- Prior research shows discounting of moderately correlated stimuli in predictive judgments.
- Understanding judgment biases is crucial for medical decision-making.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate stimulus competition in correlational judgments within a medical decision-making context.
- To compare stimulus competition effects in cause-to-effect versus effect-to-cause judgments.
- To examine the implications for associative and mentalistic models of causal attribution.
Main Methods:
- College students performed correlational judgments in a simulated medical setting.
- Participants made either cause-to-effect (predictive) or effect-to-cause (diagnostic) judgments.
- The degree of correlation between stimuli and target events was manipulated.
Main Results:
- In predictive judgments, participants discounted moderately correlated stimuli when stronger rival stimuli were present.
- In diagnostic judgments, participants did not discount moderately correlated stimuli, even with stronger rivals.
- This asymmetry suggests different processing mechanisms for predictive and diagnostic reasoning.
Conclusions:
- Stimulus competition effects are direction-dependent in causal attribution.
- Findings challenge models that do not account for judgment directionality.
- Results inform theories of associative learning and mentalistic causal reasoning.