Why Ask About Peter? Do You Think He Caused It? How the Description of Causal Events Guides the Selection of Questions About Them

Abstract

The hypothesis was tested that people use a positive test strategy to evaluate self-generated causal hypotheses. Using the implicit causality in state verbs and interpretative and state action verbs, participants were presented with behavioral descriptions eliciting different causal hypotheses. They indicated which question they wanted to ask to get more information about who instigated the event being described. Participants who hypothesized that the behavior was instigated by the actor selected the question that focused on distinctiveness information whereas participants who hypothesized that the behavior was instigated by the object selected the question that focused on consensus information, indicating participants used a positive test strategy. Nevertheless, considerations about the information value of possible answers also seemed to play a role. Still, positive test strategies seem to be so pervasive that one can infer on the basis of the type of question someone asks to whom the latter attributes the event.