Structured Causal Beliefs and Their Defence in Accounts of Student Political Action
- 1 March 1989
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Journal of Language and Social Psychology
- Vol. 8 (1) , 39-48
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927x8900800103
Abstract
It is argued that an explanation can be thought of as a structure of causal beliefs, each of which can be defended by the explainer. A method for get ting respondents to show how they organise and defend their causal explanations is described. Using the method, a study of explanations of a vivid event in local campus politics is reported. Differences in the explanations of groups of respon dents were only discovered when a full structural measure was used. It is argued that the method reported here is a more sensitive treatment than traditional single-shot attribution measures, especially for events explained in a thoughtful and systematic manner.Keywords
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