Torts - Cases, Principles, and Institutions Fifth Edition, 2016a

Witt & Tani, TCPI 6. Causation
make his shot—even though they had no interaction with the player at any time. Even spectators
watching the person visualize the successful shot agreed that the visualization had caused the
successful shot. This works with harm as well; people believe that if they poke a doll symbolic of
a victim with a needle while wishing ill on the victim, and that victim subsequently reported a
headache, they are the cause of the headache. Emily Pronin, Sylvia Rodriguez, Daniel M. Wegner
& Kimberly McCarthy, Everyday Magical Powers: The Role of Apparent Mental Causation in the
Overestimation of Personal Influence, 91 J. PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 218 (2006). In the
torts context, this means that jurors’ perceptions of the defendant’s wishes for the plaintiff may
influence their perception of whether the defendant caused harm to the plaintiff. People are also
more likely to attribute cause to people they are more focused on. For example, when viewing a
filmed conversation between two people, viewers are more likely to find a particular party caused
the outcome of the conversation if the camera was focused on that party’s face. G. Daniel
Lassiter et al., Illusory Causation: Why It Occurs, 13 PSYCHOL. SCI. 299 (2002). This may mean
that a jury will be more likely to find causation from parties that the jury sees more. Do these
psychological biases make you feel differently about the ability of the torts system to determine
questions of causation? Do you think judges or juries are more likely to commit these kinds of
errors?
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