Inaction Inaction: People Show the Reverse Action Effect for Lexical and Periphrastic Causatives

Recent work suggests that people tend to use lexical causal statements (like X activated Y) toexpress a productive concept of causation—where one event causes another when the first eventproduces the second—and periphrastic causal statements (like X caused Y to activate) to expressa counterfactual concept—where one event causes another when if the first had not happened,the second would not have too. A critical test for this account comes from the action effect and itsreversal: in conjunctive structures (X and Z cause Y), people tend to judge actions as more causalthan inactions, but in disjunctive structures (X or Z cause Y), people tend to judge actions as lesscausal than inactions. Critically, productive concepts of causation have no explanation for thereverse action effect. So, if people use lexical and periphrastic causatives to express distinctconcepts of causation, they should show a reverse action effect for periphrastic but not for lexicalcausal statements. If, however, people use counterfactual thinking when considering causalstatements generally, they should show a reverse action effect for lexical and periphrastic causalstatements. In Experiment 1, I replicated the action effect and its reversal with periphrastic causalstatements. In Experiment 2, I investigated whether the reverse action effect depends oncausative type, and I found the reverse action effect for lexical and periphrastic causalstatements. These findings suggest that counterfactual thinking affects causal judgment acrosscausative types, which is consistent with the view that people have a singular, counterfactualconcept of causation.