People's reactions to coincidences are often cited as an illustration of the irrationality of human reasoning about chance. We argue that coincidences may be better understood in terms of rational statistical inference, based on their functional role in processes of causal discovery and theory revision. We present a formal definition of…

Discusses Lawrence A. Hirschfeld's (1995) experiments, which Hirschfeld claims demonstrate that preschoolers use a biologically grounded theory in reasoning about race. Argues that the methods used cannot address the issue and therefore, the results do not support Hirschfeld's claims. Maintains that the experiments fail to demonstrate that 4- and…

Responds to John J. Kim's critique of his studies of preschoolers' understanding of race. Maintains that his and others' investigations demonstrate that preschoolers differentiate the pattern of causal reasoning governing transmission and maintenance of racial characteristics from that governing transmission and maintenance of perceptually similar…