In this paper, we present a new task that investigates how people interact with and make judgments about towers of blocks. In Experiment 1, participants in the lab solved a series of problems in which they had to re-configure three blocks from an …
Moral judgment often involves pinning causation for harm to a particular person. Since it reveals “who one sides with”, expression of moral judgment can be a costly social act that people may be motivated to conceal. Here, we demonstrate that a …
In this paper, we bring together research on active learning and intuitive physics to explore how people learn about “microworlds” with continuous spatiotemporal dynamics. Participants interacted with objects in simple two-dimensional worlds governed …
When did something almost happen? In this paper, we investigate what brings counterfactual worlds close. In Experiments 1 and 2, we find that participants’ judgments about whether something almost happened are determined by the causal proximity of …
Many social judgments hinge on assigning responsibility to individuals for their role in a group’s success or failure. Often the group’s success depends on every team member acting in a rational way. When someone does not conform to what others …
How do people make causal judgments? Here, we propose a counterfactual simulation model (CSM) of causal judgment that unifies different views on causation. The CSM predicts that people’s causal judgments are influenced by whether a candidate cause …
The actions of a rational agent reveal information about its mental states. These inferred mental states, particularly the agent’s intentions, play an important role in the evaluation of moral permissibility. While previous computational models have …
How do people assign responsibility for the outcome of an election? In previous work, we have shown that responsibility judgments in achievement contexts are affected by the probability that a person’s contribution is necessary, and by how close it …
When agents violate norms, they are typically judged to be more of a cause of resulting outcomes. In this study, we suggest that norm violations also reduce the causality of other agents, a novel phenomenon we refer to as “causal supersession.” We …
In this paper, we demonstrate that people’s causal judgments are inextricably linked to counterfactuals. In our experiments, participants judge whether one billiard ball A caused another ball B to go through a gate. Our counterfactual simulation …