Author: Jonathan Kasko
You might be reading this and wondering: “Just what does causal learning mean, anyways?” As you probably already know from the old chicken or egg problem, causality refers to the link or relationship between a cause and an effect, two events. If Joe pushes Jon, and Jon falls, Joe caused Jon to fall.
Of course, we can look at that a couple of different ways. What if there was a rock behind Jon, and he tripped over that when Joe pushed him? Did Joe cause Jon to fall, or did the rock? In this instance, we would probably say Joe caused Jon to fall, but the rock helped Jon fall. It wasn’t the cause, but it was something that was involved.
Have you ever heard of, or seen a situation in which the causation wasn’t clear? Or, where causation was confused? It’s a problem, and why so many people have adopted the mantra of “correlation does not equal causation.” That is, just because two things relate to each other doesn’t mean that one causes the other. We often assume that when two things happen close together in time (called contiguity) that one of them is causing the other. So much that back in the early 1900’s, people thought that eating ice cream was causing polio! Don’t believe me? Check out this short video.
Isn’t that fascinating? You might be wondering now how we learn about what caused something. Enter causal learning: the process by which an intelligent being discovers causal relationships. Causal learning isn’t just abstract, though: it applies to you. Think about how you engage with your classes, your homework, and so on. Why do you succeed? Why do you fail?
Often students will receive compliments such as the following: “Wow, you got 100% on your exam? You’re so smart!” This is problematic, because it doesn’t address a meaningful cause that the student can influence. “Smart” isn’t often considered something you can change. Some people would say you’re either smart, or you’re not, right? This is called a fixed mindset.
One thing you can do to improve your studies is trying to adopt a growth mindset. This is the idea that what causes your success isn’t fixed, and it can grow. Unless you’re an exceptional student, you’ve probably had situations you haven’t done as well as you would have liked in. You probably have some things you’re pretty good at, too, whether they’re related to school or not. You can look at your success and say, “I succeeded because I am good at that”, or you can say, “I succeeded because I spent a lot of time and effort on that.” The former tends to let people think things are fixed traits. The latter acknowledges that time and effort are required to grow. This is an important concept: Whether you succeed or fail on something in your studies, you should attribute your outcome to causes that are not fixed. Ask yourself: Did I put as much effort into studying for that test as I could have? Did I do well because I spent time preparing? You will find the things that best predict your success (or not) are how much time and effort you put into them. ‘Smart’ people fail all the time. Hard work beats being smart 9 times out of 10. Whew, that was a lot. Let’s take a look at this short video:
Now that you know a little bit about that, let’s demonstrate your growth mindset and aim to become better at studying. One of the great things you can do to get better at studying is to incorporate elaborative rehearsal. My friend Dom has written a whole post about it, so check it out!