ABSTRACT
Events that are perceived as having a physical cause often have a different psychological impact than those perceived as caused by human beings. The difference between these two kinds of event in their psychological impact is due to the fact that physical causality is usually viewed as deterministic, and therefore more or less inevitable. Events that causally involve human beings, on the other hand, are perceived as intentional or as resulting from some intentional activity, and therefore as optional. If events occur because of human involvement, various questions arise for the perceiver. For example, why the others did what they did, what their motives and intentions were, what they were trying to achieve, whether they were trying to benefit or harm someone, and so on. Events may, of course, be viewed as interactions between environmental causes and human actions, but here again the question of the human contribution to the event arises.
