Causation in social sciences

1. Causation in socialsciences Three approaches to theory and research Causation. Definition Three elements for causality

2. Definition • Most generally, causation is a relationship that holds between events, objects, variables, or states of affairs

3. 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

4. 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

5. Three approaches • Positivist Social Science • Interpretative Social Science • Critical Social Science

6. Positivistic social science • Positivism is the approach of the natural sciences (precise quantitative data, experiments, surveys, and statistics) • August Comte (1798-1857)

7. 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)

8. 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)

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. Social Reality

12. 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

13. Social Reality

14. Social Reality

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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

18. 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.

19. 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).

20. Dichotomy among researchers • Opinions differ in the social sciences about what is the most appropriate methodological framework • Social science commitment continuum Interpretative Approach Positivism Critical Approach Quantitative data;Causation;Predictions and control based on causation; Qualitative data;Causation is not the purpose;Lack of replications;

21. 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?

22. Anatomy of bruise • Bruise occurs when underlying muscle fibers and connective tissue are damaged without breaking the skin.

23. Imagine a situation Someone punched you on the arm BRUISE You hit against a wall

24. Example from social sciences Lack of supervision Delinquent friends CRIME Physical abuse Emotional isolation Low self-control Can we empirically observe causation?

25. 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

26. David Hume (1748) • Causality is an interpretation of observables (causal statements are always inferential) • Rooster and the Sun

27. 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...

28. Criteria for Causality • How do we know if A causes B? • Time • Association • No other factor causes both (spuriousness)

29. 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?)

30. 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.

31. 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

32. Crime Ice Cream Sales Spuriousness?

33. Heat Crime Ice Cream Sales Spuriousness?

34. Vocabulary size Cavity Spuriousness?

35. Age Vocabulary size Cavity Spuriousness?

36. 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

37. 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

38. Controversy • Not all scholars agree with those assumptions about reality • Reality can be changed • People can change the history (reality)

39. 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

40. More examples (four temperaments) The same situation evokes absolutely different reactions. How can we apply causation here?

41. 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