Cited by 56Decision-Making and Behavioral EconomicsBayesian Modeling and Causal InferencePsychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

Contrastive and counterfactual reasoning in causal judgment.

McGill, Ann L., Klein, Jill G.·1993·Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Abstract

The present research addressed differences in the use of covariation information implied by counterfactual reasoning, which focuses on the question «Would the event Y have occurred if the candidate X had not?» and contrastive reasoning, which involves comparing the target episode to contrasting background instances and noting distinctive features. Two experiments test hypotheses regarding the use of counterfactual and contrastive thinking under different conditions. Findings suggest that when no candidate has been identified, people are more likely to engage in contrastive thinking, but they may engage in counterfactual thinking when they are asked to evaluate a specific candidate

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/0022-3514.64.6.897

Cites

18 of 18 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
McGill, A. L., & Klein, J. G.
Affiliations
Northwestern University (US)
Venue
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Published
1993-06
Volume
64
Issue
6
Pages
897-905
ISSN
  • 0022-3514 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-1315
OpenAlex
W2008186371
Cited by
56
References
18
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 1 · 2014: 1 · 2012: 2
FWCI
0.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Bayesian Modeling and Causal Inference
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
Keywords
counterfactual reasoning, contrastive reasoning, causal judgment, covariation, causal inference, candidate identification, causal explanation

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review