Transcript Sociology as science - Washington State University

Causation in social
sciences
1.
2.
3.
Three approaches to theory and research
Causation. Definition
Three elements for causality
Definition
 Most generally, causation is a relationship
that holds between events, objects, variables,
or states of affairs
Causation in our life
 Causality is the centerpiece of the universe
and so the main subject of human knowledge
 It is needed for knowing the beginnings and
endings of things
 To make sense of the world
 Any question “What to do?” implies causation
Our language contains…
 the following causative verbs:
 cause, make, create, do, effect, produce, perform,
determine, influence; construct, compose, constitute;
provoke, motivate, force, facilitate, induce, get,
stimulate; begin, commence, initiate, institute,
originate, start; prevent, keep, restrain, preclude,
forbid, stop, cease, etc.
 Our language implies that we operate with causation
all the time
 We are not aware of controversy
Three approaches
 Positivist Social Science
 Interpretative Social Science
 Critical Social Science
Positivistic social science
 Positivism is the approach of the natural
sciences (precise quantitative data,
experiments, surveys, and statistics)
 August Comte (1798-1857)
Interpretative Social Science
 Interpretative social science refers to “a
reading” (text, symbols, behaviors, images,
etc)
 Interpretative researchers often use
participant observation and field research
 Max Weber (1864-1920)
Critical Social Science
 Critical Social science is a critical process of
inquiry that goes beyond surface illusions to
uncover the real structures in the material
world in order to help people change
conditions and build better world for
themselves
 Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Question 1: Why should one conduct social
scientific research?
 P: To discover and document universal laws
of human behavior in order to control and
predict human behavior/events
 I:Discover what is meaningful or relevant to
the people being studied, or how individuals
experience daily life.
 C:the purpose of critical research is to
change the world. They do this by revealing
the underlying sources of social relations and
empowering people.
Question 2: What is the fundamental nature of
social reality?
 P: Reality is real; it exists “out there” and is
waiting to be discovered.
 I: Social reality is not waiting to be
discovered. Instead, social world is largely
what people perceive it to be. It is fluid and
fragile.
 C: Reality is out there and it is shaped by
social, political, and cultural factors.
Social Reality
Thomas’s theorem (1928)
 “If people define situation as real, they are
real in their consequences”
 This theorem is related to the subjectivity of
reality
 Examples
Social Reality
Social Reality
Question 3: What is the basic nature of human
beings?
 P: People are assumed to be self-interested, pleasure
seeking, and rational individuals. People operate on the
basis of external causes, with the same cause having
the same effect on everyone.
 I:People have their own reasons for their actions, and
researchers need discover these reasons (assumption
of free will)
 C:People are creative and adaptive. Despite their
creativity, people also can be mistreated and exploited
by others. They fail to see how change is possible and
thus lose their freedom and independence.
Question 4:What is the relationship between
science and common sense
 P: Scientific knowledge is the better than and will
eventually replace the inferior ways of gaining
knowledge (tradition, common sense, astrology, etc)
 I: Ordinary people use common sense to guide them
in daily living; therefore, it is critical to understand
common sense because it contains the meaning that
people use when they engage in routine social
interactions
 C: Common sense is false consciousness. People
are exploited and taken advantage of. Common
sense is ideology of the political elite.
Question 5: What constitutes an explanation
of social reality
 P: Nomothetic (nomos means law in Greek).;
it is based on a system of laws. Explanation
takes the form: Y is caused by X.
 I: Idiographic ( it is rich and “thick” description
of something)
 C: Critical theory describes the unseen
mechanisms that account for observed reality
and it implies a plan of change
Question 6: How does one determine whether an
explanation is true or false
 P: Three conditions of causality+replication
 I: An explanation is true if it makes sense to
those being studies and if it allows others to
understand deeply or enter the reality of
those being studied
 C:Critical theory inform practical action or
suggests what to do, but the theory is
modified on the basis of its use.
Question 7: What does good evidence look
like?
 P:Empirical facts which we can observe by
using our sense organs (eyesight, smell,
hearing, and touch)
 I:Social situations contain a great deal of
ambiguity. This makes almost impossible to
discover straightforward, objective facts.
 C:Critical researchers look at the facts and
ask who benefits and who loses (basically
what is standing behind the facts).
Dichotomy among researchers
 Opinions differ in the social sciences about
what is the most appropriate methodological
framework
 Social science commitment continuum
Positivism
Quantitative data;
Causation;
Predictions and
control based on
causation;
Critical
Approach
Interpretative
Approach
Qualitative data;
Causation is not the
purpose;
Lack of replications;
Can we observe causality?
 It is not possible to detect a cause empirically
 We can rarely directly sense a cause
 We merely induce their existence from our
experience of the association of two or more
events
 Can we observe how a hard blow to the arm
causes a bruise?
Anatomy of bruise
 Bruise occurs when underlying muscle fibers
and connective tissue are damaged without
breaking the skin.
Imagine a situation
Someone punched
you on the arm
BRUISE
You hit against a wall
Example from social sciences
Lack of supervision
Delinquent friends
CRIME
Physical abuse
Emotional isolation
Low self-control
Can we empirically observe causation?
David Hume (1748)
 It is impossible to demonstrate empirically
that a cause produces an effect
 Just because the sun has risen every day
since the beginning of the Earth does not
mean that it will rise again tomorrow
 However; it is impossible to go about one's
life without assuming such connections, and
the best that we can do is to maintain an
open mind and never presume that we know
any laws of causality for certain
David Hume (1748)
 Causality is an interpretation of observables
(causal statements are always inferential)
 Rooster and the Sun
Ridicules Examples
 Before television, two World Wars; after
television, no World Wars
 In similar fashion, one of my friends recently
pointed out to his girlfriend that he didn't have
any grey hairs until after he started going out
with her...which is true but he's in his late 30s
and they've been seeing each other for 3
years
 I suppose it could be the relationship...
Criteria for Causality
 How do we know if A causes B?
 Time
 Association
 No other factor causes both (spuriousness)
Time
 It is usually presumed that the cause
chronologically precedes the effect
 In a strict reading, if A causes B, then A must
always be followed by B.
 Sex and pregnancy (what goes first?)
 Smoking and lung cancer (What goes first?)

Association/correlation
 Changes in X cause changes in Y
 For example, football weekends cause
heavier traffic, more food sales, etc.
 We must be very careful in interpreting
correlation coefficients
 Just because two variables are highly
correlated does not mean that one causes
the other
 There are many good examples of correlation
which are nonsensical when interpreted in
terms of causation.
Examples
 Ice cream sales and the crime rate are
correlated (both increase during summer)
 The number of cavities in elementary school
children and vocabulary size have a strong
positive correlation
Spuriousness?
Ice Cream
Sales
Crime
Spuriousness?
Heat
Ice Cream
Sales
Crime
Spuriousness?
Cavity
Vocabulary
size
Spuriousness?
Age
Cavity
Vocabulary
size
Causality
 Requires some assumptions about the world
 Reality is real, it exists “out there” and waits to
be discovered
 Kant argued that reality exists independently
of people’s perception about it
Assumptions for Causality
 Reality is ordered (not chaotic)
 Behavior of humans is patterned
 Think about two-three examples of that
 Without this assumption the logic and
predictions would be impossible
 Reality is stable, but knowledge about it is
additive
Controversy
 Not all scholars agree with those
assumptions about reality
 Reality can be changed
 People can change the history (reality)
What is different about people?
 Human beings are qualitatively different from
the objects of study in the natural sciences
(rocks, stars, chemical compounds, etc)
 Humans think and learn, have an awareness
of themselves and their past
 These unique human characteristics are the
reason for the debate how criminology should
look like
More examples (four temperaments)
The same situation
evokes absolutely
different reactions.
How can we apply
causation here?
How to solve the problem of causality?
 Interpretative approach does not say that
social behavior is chaotic
 There is some pattern in human behavior
 But this pattern is not due to the causal laws
 It is created out of the system of social
conventions people generate during their
interactions