Discounting in Causality and Covariation Judgements

Abstract

In two experiments, humans were asked to judge the strength of a moderate contingency between a cue and an outcome in the presence of a second strong contingency between another cue and the outcome. The first experiment replicated the discounting effect whereby a strong contingency causes subjects to reduce or discount judgements of a moderate contingency. This experiment used a video-game procedure in which subjects camouflaged a tank to make it safe from mines. The second causal cue was the presence or absence of a spotter plane. Experiment 1 also ruled out the possibility that judgements might be determined by the number of co-occurrences of the cue and outcome as opposed to the level of contingency. The second experiment used an abstract scenario in which discounting was demonstrated when subjects were asked to judge the relationship between the occurrence of geometric objects. The instructions were neutral to discourage causal hypotheses. These results support the notion that judgements result from associative or connectionist processes and not from a two-step cognitive retrospective process in which an estimate of covariation is calculated between cue and outcome and then in a second step this information is used in a normative manner when a decision is made.