“The Causal Mindset” is a structured approach to understanding and applying causal analysis in an accessible and practical way to improve decision-making in business and beyond.
Why Causality?
Understanding the concept of causality is crucial from fighting climate change, to our quest for happiness, including strategic decisions making.
Causality is interested about relating cause and effect and answering “why?” and “what if?”. And in essence the biggest questions today relate to this concept. For example:
What is driving climate change? What is the effect of this mitigation strategy?
What are the cause of the spread of a certain health issue? What if we encourage healthy life habits?
What is driving happiness? What if I reduce screen time?
Watch my TEDx explaining the concept and providing the basic tools:
Facts vs Fiction
Distinguishing between facts and fiction is crucial for making informed decisions and protecting oneself from manipulation. Unfortunately, this task is becoming increasingly challenging in the face of the overwhelming surge of information, where misinformation, deceptive articles, and outright lies abound.
Fact-checking isn't always practical, as it can be time-consuming and often assumes that there is a definitive "correct" answer available.
To combat this growing problem, THE CAUSAL MINDSET offers a versatile tool that can be used almost anytime and anywhere to uncover flaws in arguments and enhance decision-making.
Key Applications
Example
The Causal Mindset's answer:
Causal Mindset Application: We're using the causal mindset framework to analyze the apparent effect of the government's energy-saving campaign on net consumption.
Quick Feedback - Major Flaw: The graph shows a correlation between the start of the government's recommendations and a decrease in net consumption. However, a major flaw would be to immediately conclude causation. The decrease might correlate with other factors, such as seasonal changes in energy use.
Is there something else?: It's critical to consider alternative explanations for the observed decrease in net consumption. Seasonal temperature variations, economic activity, or even social changes due to the war in Ukraine may also influence energy consumption patterns.
Can We Extrapolate?: The external validity is questionable. The specific conditions in Switzerland during this period, like its economic structure, public receptiveness to government campaigns, and the social context of the war in Ukraine, may limit the generalizability of these results to other contexts or periods.
Counterfactual: We should consider what energy consumption might have looked like without the government's campaign. Would there still have been a decrease due to other factors such as increased individual awareness of energy issues?
Common Biases: Confirmation bias might lead us to attribute the decrease in consumption to the campaign because it aligns with our expectations. Seasonal effects, like warmer winters, could also confound the results.
Offering Solutions: To accurately measure the causality, one could propose a controlled study where similar regions are compared, with some not exposed to the campaign. Changes in consumption can then be more reliably attributed to the campaign itself.
For a deeper analysis, journalists could investigate the government's data collection methods and look for independent data sources. Decision-makers might use this data to inform future policy, while researchers could design studies to test the campaign's effectiveness more rigorously.
By considering these factors, we can avoid jumping to conclusions and instead appreciate the complexity of causality in this scenario.
About the author
I dedicated my career to bridging academia and civil society through innovative teaching and research. Beyond research, I taught statistics and causal inference to more than 10,000 people. over the last decade. More about myself on my personnal page.
The Framework behind the App
THE CAUSAL MINDSET is a set of practical tools inspired by statistics, and causal inference (the study of cause and effects), that I use to do scientific research, taught in academia and beyond.
I am currently finishing writting the book The Causal Mindset. You can sign up for the book updates here: Sign up
