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Causal pre-emption scenarios are problematic for the counterfactual framework of causation (CFC) because people judge an action to be the actual cause of an outcome although the outcome would have occurred anyway due to the action of a pre-empted alternative cause. We propose that commonsense causal questions typically probe specific events that actually happened as and how they did, and show that counterfactuals that probe specific events match selections of actual cause, and dissociations only occur with non-specific counterfactuals. In addition, the pre-empted action is often selected as the or an actual cause when it causes the pre-empting action (auto-pre-emption). Judgements of an action's responsibility for the outcome track judgements of actual cause following the legal sine qua non principle. Agent reproach is also influenced by the agent's intention. The effects of causal dependency structure and counterfactual question type are robust across the intentionality of the pre-empting action and scenario content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to difference-based (e.g. counterfactual/covariational) models of causal judgement, the epistemic state of the agent should not affect judgements of cause. Four experiments examined opportunity chains in which a physical event (distal cause) enabled a subsequent proximal cause to produce an outcome. All four experiments showed that when the proximal cause was a human action, it was judged as more causal if the agent was aware of his opportunity than if he was not or if the proximal cause was a physical event. The first two experiments showed that these preferences could not be explained in terms of differences in perceived conditional probability (whether from the observer's or the agent's point of view), social controllability or perceptions of the causal sequence as forming a single unit. The third experiment showed that awareness affected the perceived deliberateness with which the action brought the outcome about but not its perceived voluntariness. The fourth experiment showed that when the outcome was intended, the perceived deliberateness of the agent's action was a plausible mediator of the effect of awareness of opportunity on causal preference. We conclude that awareness of the opportunity allows inferences about the deliberate production of the outcome when the action is voluntary, which in turn influence causal judgements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We address the way verb-based and rule-content knowledge are combined in understanding institutional deontics. Study 1 showed that the institutional regulations used in our studies were readily categorised into one of two content groups: rights or duties. Participants perceived rights as benefiting the addressees identified by the rule, whereas they perceived duties as benefiting the collective that imposed the rule. Studies 2, 3, and 4 showed that rule content (rights vs. duties) had clear effects on perceptions of violations and relevance of cases for explaining the rule, even when controlling for deontic verb, phrasing of the action permitted by a right, or the formality of the deontic verb. These effects are incompatible with a simple pragmatic disambiguation approach to pragmatic modulation, as they often induce permissibility judgments that contradict the core semantic meanings of the deontic verbs. Other ways of reconciling verb meaning with rule content should be considered in a fuller theory of the interpretation of institutional rules. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates a cognitive consistency model of the directionality of conditional instructions and advice that use probability expressions to express uncertainty about the antecedentp.The proposed model combines world knowledge (conveyed by causal direction) with linguistic information (conveyed by polarity and negation), and predicts whether the complex sentence antecedent has a positive or negative directionality, which in turn predicts whether a positive or negative conclusionqwill be drawn. The first experiment usesDo q if pconditionals to show that given a consequentqparticipants complete antecedentspwith a probability expression in line with expected sentence directionality. The second experiment usesIf p then do qconditionals to show similar effects in a reverse direction. A third experiment usesIf p then do qconditionals to show that participants draw conclusions predicted by the cognitive consistency model but not by a decision-theoretic approach to reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The suppression of the Modus Ponens inference is described as a loss of confidence in the conclusion C of an argument ''If A1 then C; If A2 then C; A1'' where A2 is a requirement for C to happen. It is hypothesised that this loss of confidence is due to the derivation of the conversational implicature ''there is a chance that A2 might not be satisfied'', and that different syntactic introductions of the requirement A2 (e.g., ''If C then A2'') will lead to various frequencies in the derivation of this implicature, according to previous studies in the field of causal explanation. An experiment is conducted, whose results support those claims. Results are discussed in the light of the Mental Logic and Mental Model theories, as well as in the light of the pragmatic approach to uncertain reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a whole range of areas in which the latest work on psychology, social psychology and behavioral finance could offer competitive advantage both to financial markets as well as individual firms. The aim is to identify potential applications of experimental and organizational psychology to improve the efficiency of financial institutions. The focus is on two major areas of application: trading and dealing in currencies, and investment decision-making. The paper reviews the seven deadly sins in individual decision-making showing how the financial decision-maker may fall prey to them. It also suggests how this knowledge can be put to use in improving efficiency in financial strategy, marketing, and human resource management (selection, training, decision-aiding, and control). The paper concludes by identifying important questions for the financial markets to consider if they are serious about improving managerial practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Good explanations are not only true or probably true, but are also relevant to a causal question. Current models of causal explanation either only address the question of the truth of an explanation, or do not distinguish the probability of an explanation from its relevance. The tasks of scenario construction and conversational explanation are distinguished, which in turn shows how scenarios can interact with conversational principles to determine the truth and relevance of explanations. The proposed model distinguishes causal discounting from causal backgrounding , and makes predictions concerning the differential effects of contextual information about alternative explanations on: (a) the kind of mental models constructed; (b) belief revision about probable cause; and (c) the perceived quality of a focal explanation. Four experiments are reported that test these predictions. The significance of the notion of explanatory relevance for research on causal explanation is then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was concerned with the measurement and comparison of Protestant Work Ethic scores in 13 countries. Subjects completed seven work ethic scales, which have varying reliabilities and validities. Cronbach alphas indicated that five of the seven had acceptable reliability. For every measure, there was a highly significant difference between the scores of subjects from the different countries, and the differences tended to be consistent over the various measures. Subjects from richer. First World countries tended to have lower scores than those from Third World countries. Also, the correlation between the most well known work ethic scale score and Hofstede's (1984) power-distance score for the 13 countries was highly significant, indicating that work ethic beliefs were associated with differential weights placed on prestige, power, and wealth in a society. The results are discussed in terms of the extensive literature on cross-cultural comparison, particularly with reference to work beliefs and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]