Causation
• In social science studies, events and conditions all
have causes. As sociologist seek for the causes for
social events, their approaches are called
determinism.
• Natural sciences widely apply deterministic model
such as growth of human being is affected by
nutrition and inheritance factors.
• Similarly large number of social science studies
use deterministic model to investigate causing
factors for social events
Finding Causes in Social Science
• Why the foundation providing a million dollar
support to your prejudice research rejected your
research conclusion that follows
“We discovered that some people are racially
prejudiced and some are not”
• The foundation is looking at some
explanations/causes why some people become
prejudiced and some do not. Such influential
factors appeared in many prejudice research
report: economic competition, religious ideology,
political view, childhood experience, education.
Causes in Social Science
• Studies in juvenile delinquency uncover the
causing factors for the delinquent behaviors that
other than the delinquent’s free choice
• Social scientists seek understandings of social
events, construct causal explanations, and use
deterministic model of human behavior.
• Some social scientists do not construct causal
models, but in pursuing the
linkages/associations/relationship among social
variables, they inevitably use deterministic model
Causation in Idiographic Model
• Emphasizing multiplicity of reasons that can
account for a specific behavior provides an
illustration of idiographic explanation, which aims
at explanation by enumerating the many reasons
that lie behind a particular events or action
• For example, historians can enumerate all the
specific causes of the French revolution or
perpetual conflicts in the Balkans
• A criminologist may look into all possible causes
for defendants for a specific crime
Pacifici’s Discourse Analysis
• Philadelphia eradication of a civil right group
MOVE has killed 11 people and destroyed 2 urban
block in 1985
• Waco, Texas
• Dissecting the meaning of communication,
Pacifici discovered that police pronouncement is
best considered as “a discourse of war”, which
makes sense of the tragic results that ensue the
conflict.
Causality in nomothetic model
• Unlike idiographic model that enumerate all
the considerations that result in a particular
action or event, nomothetic model aim at
discovering those most important
considerations that explain general classes
of actions/events
Comparison of idiographic and
nomothetic models
• Idiographic model to explain prejudice
Try to understand why a particular person chooses
to be prejudiced, emphasizing a large number of
idiosyncratic conditions and experiences
• Nomothetic model seek factors that affect levels of
prejudice. For example more educated people are
less prejudiced than less educated people.
• Nomothetic model is often accused of
dehumanizing the individuals. For example,
nomothetic model explain religiosity is a function
of gender, age, marital status, and social class
Comparison of idiographic and
nomothetic models 2
• Although both methods are looking for causality,
they commonly use different types of data. Trying
to obtain a great depth of detailed information
surrounding a social event, idiographic models
normally use qualitative data
• In contrast, nomothetic model often use
quantitative data to show a general pattern.
• For example, idiographic model can produce full
accounts for the reasons for a person’s
homelessness, whereas nomthetic model can
generally tell whether education and gender are
predictors for homelessness
Criteria for Causality
• Relationship between variables does not equal
causality
• Democratics prefer strawberry to vanilla ice cream
• How to determine the causality (one thing causes
another)?
• (1) credibility or believability of the story
• (2) whether rival hypotheses are seriously
considered
Lazarsfeld’s Three Criteria
• Time order, the cause must precede the effect
receive education first, become less prejudiced
second
Some time the time order is no easy to establish.
Parental education affects children education. But
in some rare cases, parents go to school due to the
advanced education of their children
• The two variables are empirically related
Pearson’s correlation coefficients, regression
coefficients. How strong to be strong, how
significant to be significant
Lazarsfeld’s Three Criteria 2
• A casual relation between two variables can
not be explained by a third variable
Drowning death
Ice cream sale
Season’s effect
Causality
• Researchers report a causality when (1)
cause precede the effect (event history
analysis wins over cross-sectional
multivariable regression); (2) empirical
correlation high (Pearson’s correlation
coefficients); and (3) no spuriousness
Necessary and Sufficient Causes
• Necessary cause: a condition that must be
present for the effect to follow
Women
Pregnant
• But a necessary condition does not
guarantee the occurrence of the effect, not
all the women are pregnant
Sufficient condition
• A condition, if it is present, guarantees the
effect
Skipping a test
Other Causes
Failing the test
Difference Between Necessary
and Sufficient Conditions
Women
Pregnant
Sufficient and Necessary
Conditions
Having enough money
Drug use
Buying a house
Contracting AIDS