ABSTRACT
Current psychological models of causal induction assume that causal relationships are inferred based on observations about whether the cause and effect are present or absent. The current study investigated how people infer the causal roles of unobserved events. In Experiment 1 we demonstrate that participants are indeed willing to evaluate the causal roles of unobserved events. We then suggest that the basis for these judgments may be situations in which effects occur in the absence of observed causes. Experiment 2 provides evidence that such information does influence participants’ judgments about unobserved causes.
