What would have happened? Counterfactuals, hypotheticals and causal judgements

Abstract

How do people make causal judgements? In this paper, I show that counterfactual simulations are necessary for explaining causal judgements about events, and that hypotheticals do not suffice. In two experiments, participants viewed video clips of dynamic interactions between billiard balls. In Experiment 1, participants either made hypothetical judgements about whether ball B would go through the gate if ball A were not present in the scene, or counterfactual judgements about whether ball B would have gone through the gate if ball A had not been present. Because the clips featured a block in front of the gate that sometimes moved and sometimes stayed put, hypothetical and counterfactual judgements came apart. A computational model that evaluates hypotheticals and counterfactuals by running noisy physical simulations accurately captured participants’ judgements. In Experiment 2, participants judged whether ball A caused ball B to go through the gate. The results showed a tight fit between counterfactual and causal judgements, whereas hypotheticals did not predict causal judgements. I discuss the implications of this work for theories of causality, and for studying the development of counterfactual thinking in children. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny’.

Mental jenga: A counterfactual simulation model of causal judgments about physical support.

“…For prediction, one only needs to unroll a simulation of what will happen forward. Giving causal explanations, however, involves a comparison of what actually happened with what would have happened otherwise (Gerstenberg, in press).…”

“…Gerstenberg et al (2017) showed that people spontaneously engage in counterfactual simulation when making causal judgments as evidenced by their eye movements. People do not just look at what actually happened; they look at where ball B would have gone if ball A had not been present in the scene (see also Gerstenberg, in press).…”

“…When judging causation in dynamic scenes, people need to consider what would have happened if something in the past had been different (Gerstenberg, in press; Gerstenberg, Goodman, et al, 2021; Gerstenberg et al, 2017). When judging support in static scenes, people need to consider what would happen if something in the present were different.…”

Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny

“…Theories have previously identified that counterfactual simulations in particular may be fundamental to human judgements of causality [87,88], such that people tend to judge that A caused B if and only if B would not have eventuated in the absence of A . As Gerstenberg [89] points out, however, an alternative possibility is that causal judgements depend on hypothetical simulations of the future. That is, people may judge that A caused B by imagining a potential future scenario in which A is absent and B therefore fails to eventuate.…”

A Plausible role of Imagination in Pretense, Executive Functions, and Counterfactual Reasoning

“…During CFR, mental representations that are explicitly contrary to facts or beliefs are imagined (Roese & Morrison, 2009). More precise definitions focus on mentally travelling back in time to observe something that actually happened and imagining a change to what actually happened by simulating how this alternatively would have turned out differently (Beck, Riggs, & Burns, 2011;Gerstenberg, 2022;Rafetseder et al, 2013). The question of whether children can reason counterfactually and what types of thinking count as true CFR is frequently debated in the developmental literature (Beck, Riggs, & Burns, 2011;Nyhout & Ganea, 2019a;Rafetseder et al, 2013;Rafetseder & Perner, 2010.…”