The Broad Reach of Multivariable Thinking

Abstract

Simple explanations are very often inadequate and can encour-age faulty inferences. We examined college students’ explanations regard-ing illegal immigration to determine the prevalence of single-factor expla-nations. The form of students’ expla-nations was predicted by their re-sponses on a simple three-item forced-choice multivariable causal reasoning task in which they selected the strongest evidence against a causal claim. In a further qualitative investigation of explanations by a sample of community adults, we identified positive features among those who scored high on this multi-variable causal reasoning task. We consider limitations of single-factor reasoning and means of encouraging more comprehensive explanations to support claims.