Causal uncertainty and metacognitive inferences about goal attainment

Abstract

These four studies investigated G. Weary and J. A. Edwards’ (1996) hypothesis that causal uncertainty feelings serve as input to perceivers regarding the adequacy of their causal knowledge and thus determine the amount of processing accorded a given task. Participants worked on a task until they had satisfied an assigned stop rule. In three experiments, high causally uncertain people processed more information under a sufficiency of information rule and less under an enjoyment rule, whereas low causally uncertain people generally did not differentiate between the rules. In the last experiment, low causally uncertain people exhibited a similar pattern to the chronic causally uncertain individuals in the first experiments, but only after their causal uncertainty beliefs and feelings had been primed.

Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by Canadian Foundation for Innovation New Opportunities Grant #7115 awarded to JJ and by National Science Foundation Grant #SBR-9709541 awarded to GW. Experiment 3 was conducted in connection with Sharon Lin's honours thesis.

We thank Robert M. Arkin, Timothy C. Brock, John A. Edwards, and Geoffrey Leonardelli for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. We also extend our gratitude to Elena Ballantyne, Michael Barnett-Cowan, Indraneel Chakraborti, Jorden Cummings, and Emma Sasaki for their assistance in scheduling participants and collecting the data.

Notes

¹The statements about the cat simply were intended to help familiarise the participants with the computer program. A similar practice set was not provided in the other experiments because either the procedures were easier to follow (index cards in Experiment 1b; memory task in Experiment 2) or the longer delay could have weakened the effectiveness of the prime (Experiment 3).

²Causal uncertainty is correlated with at least two other constructs that have been associated with information-processing tendencies: personal need for structure (PNS; Neuberg & Newsom, 1993) and need for cognitive closure (NCC; Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). We do not believe that they represent viable alternative explanations for our results for several reasons. First, the theories underlying these other variables do not yield the same predictions as causal uncertainty. For instance, because the theories behind PNS and NCC do not address affective or metacognitive feelings, it is difficult to determine a priori what type of input individuals high or low in these dimensions would use to interpret the stop rules and form their behavioural responses. Second, these two individual differences relate to a desired outcome (i.e., simple structure or closure) that can be achieved either through more or less information processing depending on the situation (Neuberg & Newsom, 1993). For example, high need for closure participants should process less under a sufficiency rule than would low need for closure participants because Webster and Kruglanski (1994, Study 4) have shown that high need for closure people need less information and less time to form a more confident judgement than do their low need for closure counterparts. Under an enjoyment rule, however, participants’ task perceptions would have to be known before any predictions could be made because need for closure is heightened by unattractive tasks (Webster, 1993). This variable was not manipulated in the stop rules procedure, and thus it constitutes an individual judgement.

³Our goal for examining the order effect in Experiment 1a was to establish that people's causal uncertainty levels were not a result of the experimental tasks because we got the same effects regardless of when the participants completed the scale. However, the careful reader may wonder why completing the CUS before the task in Experiment 1a did not serve as a priming manipulation as did memorising the CUS sentences in Experiment 3. In Experiment 1a (as in Experiments 1b and 2), the CUS was completed along with a number of other scales including the two mood measures. Being among these other measures likely reduced any priming effects completing the CUS might have had on participants’ responses. That is, participants were trying to decide whether or not a large number of statements covering several different constructs applied to them, and there is no theoretical reason that any one of these measures, let alone causal uncertainty, should have yielded a more powerful effect on the content activated in participants’ minds than the other scales.