Advice conditionals about tips and warnings: interpretations and inferences

The Suppression of Inferences From Counterfactual Conditionals

“…It occurs whether participants are explicitly told about additional or alternative conditions, or instead retrieve them from memory (e.g., Cummins, Lubart, Alksnis, & Rist, 1991; De Neys, Schaeken, & D’Ydewalle, 2002, 2003; Dieusseurt, Schaeken, Schroyens, & d’Ydewalle, 2000; Verschueren, Schaeken, & d'Ydewalle, 2005), whether they make a categorical judgment about what follows, or a judgment about their degree of certainty in the conclusion (e.g., Geiger & Oberauer, 2007; Markovits, Brisson, & de Chantal, 2015; Markovits, Brunet, & Lortie Forges, 2010), and whether the additional condition is presented as an enabler, for example, “if the sun shone the plants bloomed” or a disabler, for example, “if the sun did not shine the plants did not bloom” (e.g., Markovits et al, 2010; see also Markovits & Potvin, 2001). In many everyday situations, causal outcomes are over‐determined or depend on multiple joint causes (e.g., Kominsky, Phillips, Gerstenberg, Lagnado, & Knobe, 2015; Rehder, 2014; Strickland, Silver, & Keil, 2017), and suppression occurs not only for inferences about causal relations but also for relations based on intentions (e.g., Juhos, Quelhas, & Byrne, 2015), inducements (e.g., Couto, Quelhas, & Byrne, 2017), and polite discourse (e.g., Bonnefon & Hilton, 2002, 2004; Demeure, Bonnefon, & Raufaste, 2009; see also Chan & Chua, 1994). Despite the extensive research on the suppression effect, no studies have examined how it interacts with other beliefs, or with other reasoning effects, such as the counterfactual elevation effect, to which we now turn.…”