Phenomenal causality

" Phenomenal causality " is used in psychology , and more specifically in social psychology , when a movement or change in an object is perceived as being caused by another object (or in social psychology, for example, an event or other state of affairs as being caused by the individuality or a person's behavior).

“When we see an object A in motion, we can ascribe that motion either to A itself or to another object B. In the first case we see the movement as spontaneous activity by A, in the second case as passive movement brought about by B. (...)

As a first approach to an analysis, we can say that the origin and the change ascribed to it form a unit, ie the change 'belongs' to the origin. The connection between origin and change is manifest and phenomenal in many cases, appears as a causal dependence: 'The origin causes the change.' "

Early fundamental psychological work on phenomenal causality can be traced back to the Gestalt theorist Karl Duncker (1903–1940) and the Belgian psychologist Albert Michotte (1881–1965), who was also oriented towards gestalt theory and who reported on a series of experiments on causal perception in 1946.

Hypotheses about such perceptual processes were later tested in social psychological experiments . In social psychology, attempts are made to explain the “ causal attribution ” (ie the perception or ascription of the cause) through the attribution theory (s) , which go back above all to the gestalt psychologist Fritz Heider (1896–1988).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fritz Heider: Social perception and phenomenal causality. In: Martin Irle (ed.), Together with Mario von Cranach and Hermann Vetter: Texts from experimental social psychology. Luchterhand: 1969. p. 26, p. 27.
2. ↑ see Karl Duncker (1935): On the psychology of productive thinking . In this, Duncker refutes David Hume's view of the impossibility of recognizing causal factors in individual cases, thus preparing the ground for Albert Michotte's later attempts.
3. ^ Albert Michotte (1946): The Perception of Causality
4. ↑ A demonstration of the phenomenal causality going back to Michotte can be found here: Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ^ " Locus of cause ". In: Paul F. Secord, Carl W. Backman: Social psychology. McGraw-Hill Book Company New York 1964. pp. 87 ff.