The scientific emphasis on causal explanations - AO3

• Experiments are keen to establish causation but typically discount or minimise the importance of extraneous variables that haven't been controlled
• There are so many variables that influence human behaviour, it's impossible to control them all effectively
• We can't be certain that the causal conclusions made in experiments are genuine
• Psychological causality as revealed in laboratory experiments is arguably never deterministic
• In order to determine whether a significant difference or relationship has been found, data is analysed with a statistical test
• Statistical tests show the probability that something occurred by chance
• Statistical analysis is therefore built on the idea of multiple possibilities rather than a single cause
• There is no such thing as hard determinism, even in the natural sciences
• Hard determinism seemed more appropriate in the 18th and 19th centuries when most physicists believed they would eventually be able to make very precise and accurate predictions about everything relevant to physics
• Discoveries in the 20th century, such as chaos theory, suggested physicists were unduly optimistic about hard determinism
• According to chaos theory, very small changes in initial conditions can produce major changes later on
• The flap of a butterfly's wing in one part of the world could ultimately change the whole weather system in a different part of the world
• Such a chain of events doesn't lend itself to prediction, so it is impossible to show that an approach based on hard determinism is appropriate
• Determinism is consistent with the aims of science as it allows us to predict behaviour, see cause and effect and therefore better understand and manage behaviour