Inherent directionality of “even if” counterfactual conditionals

ABSTRACT

In this research, we investigate whether semifactual conditionals such as “even if there had been an A, there would have been a B” are understood by thinking initially of the antecedent “A”, as was found with factual conditionals. The “inherent directionality” hypothesis assumes that for the comprehension of most relational statements, a presuppositional element (i.e. the “relatum”) is initially established. For “even if”, both terms could work as “relatum”. This is because on the one hand, people tend to infer “B” from “A” and “not-A” and, on the other hand, “B” could work as a pragmatic presupposition. In the present experiment, semifactual and factual conditionals were tested with a sentence-picture verification task. Results were consistent with the “inherent directionality” hypothesis: only “if then” factual conditionals, but not semifactuals, showed a preference for reasoning from the antecedent, with faster verifications.

KEYWORDS:

• Conditionals
• semifactuals
• directionality effects
• inherent directionality hypothesis

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Juan García-Madruga, Ruth Byrne & Mark Keane.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry for Science [PSI2011-29504].