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Do we need the inherence heuristic to explain the bias towards inherent explanations?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2014

Yarrow Dunham*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511. [email protected]://scdlab.yale.edu

Abstract

It is clear that people often make unwarranted inherence-based explanations, but it is less clear that explaining this fact requires the inherence heuristic. Instead, it can be explained by a more general explanatory apparatus operating on the most readily available information, which, depending on the nature of that information, outputs both inherent and noninherent explanations.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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