THE ROLE OF COVARIATION VERSUS MECHANISM INFORMATION IN CAUSAL ATTRIBUTION

Traditional approaches to causal attribution propose that information about covariation of factors is used to identify causes of events. In contrast, we present a series of studies showing that people seek out and prefer information about causal mechanisms rather than information about covariation. Experiments 1, 2 and 3 asked subjects to indicate the kind of information they would need for causal attribution. The su bjects tended to seek out information that would provide evidence for or against hypotheses about underlying mechanisms. When asked to provi de causes, the subjects' descriptions were also based on causal mechan isms. In Experiment 4, subjects received pieces of conflicting evidenc e matching in covariation values but differing in whether the evidence included some statement of a mechanism. The influence of evidence was significantly stronger when it included mechanism information. We con clude that people do not treat the task of causal attribution as one o f identifying a novel causal relationship between arbitrary factors by relying solely on covariation information. Rather, people attempt to seek out causal mechanisms in developing a causal explanation for a sp ecific event.