Abstract

We demonstrate that people infer causes from effects, relying upon events' eventual outcomes to infer the events' prior causes. For example, people inferred that a given event (a computer crash) had a large cause (malicious virus) if that event had a large outcome (job loss), but a small cause (malfunctioning cooling fan) if the outcome was small. Outcome-cause matching (a) occurs even when outcomes are completely uninformative about potential causes, (b) arises along several dimensions, including magnitude and valence, and (c) is especially pronounced among those high in just-world beliefs and need for closure. Implications for theories of perceived causality, as well as practical implications (e.g., liability for product failure) are discussed.