Like scientists, children and adults are often motivated to explain the world around them, including why people behave in particular ways, why objects have some properties rather than others, and why events unfold as they do. Moreover, people have strong and systematic intuitions about what makes something a good (or beautiful) explanation. Why are we so driven to explain? And what accounts for our explanatory preferences? In this talk I’ll present older work demonstrating that both children and adults prefer explanations that are simple, broad, and consistent with their prior beliefs. I’ll also present newer work that compares learning by explaining with learning by predicting. The good news is that explaining can sometimes improve learning and support effective inferences. The bad news is that under some conditions, our explanatory preferences can lead children and adults astray.
Speaker
Tania LombrozoArthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Psychology at Princeton