The dissipation effect: a general tendency in causal judgements about complex physical systems

White, Peter Anthony ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9080-6678 1998. The dissipation effect: a general tendency in causal judgements about complex physical systems. American Journal of Psychology 111 (3) , pp. 379-410. 10.2307/1423447

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Abstract

This research was concerned with naive ecology: ordinary people's understanding of causal processes in nature. Three experiments were performed to investigate the dissipation effect, defined by White (1997) as a tendency to judge that effects of a perturbation at a particular locus in an ecosystem or food web dissipate as they spread out from that locus. The experiments found further evidence for the generality of the effect, ruled out confidence in judgment as a possible explanation, and suggested that the dissipation effect may be a general feature of causal reasoning about complex physical systems. There is a danger that the dissipation effect may underlie unintentional maltreatment of the environment, and there is a need for more research on this.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
ISSN:	0002-9556
Last Modified:	20 Oct 2022 09:56
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/33591

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