When people explain difficult actions, is the causal question how or why?

Recent research shows that the framing of causal questions influences the c hoice of goals and preconditions as explanations of actions. However, resea rch has not examined participants' judgments as to which causal questions a re most relevant to explain actions. Study 1 examined which question ("why" or "how") participants would use to gain information to help them explain actions that required substantial preconditions. As a measure of difficulty (obstruction), the target actors were defined as rich, poor or unspecified groups. Actions performed by rich people elicited more "why" questions and goal explanations whereas actions performed by poor people elicited more " how" questions and precondition explanations. The second study examined the effects of causal questions on explanations, using colloquial causal quest ions in addition to those used in previous research. The findings indicate that the difficulty of an action for social groups influences causal questi ons, which in turn predict preferred explanations.