ERIC Number: EJ1010064
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0364-0213
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
The Causal Structure of Utility Conditionals
Bonnefon, Jean-Francois; Sloman, Steven A.
Cognitive Science, v37 n1 p193-209 Jan-Feb 2013
The psychology of reasoning is increasingly considering agents' values and preferences, achieving greater integration with judgment and decision making, social cognition, and moral reasoning. Some of this research investigates utility conditionals, ‘"if 'p' then 'q'’" statements where the realization of "p" or "q" or both is valued by some agents. Various approaches to utility conditionals share the assumption that reasoners make inferences from utility conditionals based on the comparison between the utility of "p" and the expected utility of "q." This article introduces a new parameter in this analysis, the underlying causal structure of the conditional. Four experiments showed that causal structure moderated utility-informed conditional reasoning. These inferences were strongly invited when the underlying structure of the conditional was causal, and significantly less so when the underlying structure of the conditional was diagnostic. This asymmetry was only observed for conditionals in which the utility of "q" was clear, and disappeared when the utility of "q" was unclear. Thus, an adequate account of utility-informed inferences conditional reasoning requires three components: utility, probability, and causal structure. (Contains 1 table and 7 notes.)
Descriptors: Logical Thinking, Inferences, Influences, Probability, Preferences, College Students, Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: France
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A