People intuitively prefer invisible-hand explanations of social phenomena over explanations that resort to intended goals

Jonušaitė, Izabelė, and Tomer D. Ullman. 2022. “The Invisible Hand as an Intuitive Sociological Explanation.” PsyArXiv. July 13. doi:10.31234/osf.io/p374w

Abstract: The invisible hand is a type of explanation, often used in the social sciences and economics. An invisible-hand explanation accounts for a state of affairs as the emergent outcome of individual actions, without the individuals intending the explained phenomenon. Invisible-hand explanations have been used in formal settings to account for a variety of phenomena, from segregation to traffic norms. But, they have not been studied cognitively and empirically as an intuitive explanation type. Here, we propose and show that people intuitively prefer invisible-hand explanations over intentional-design explanations. We first establish that given pairs of explanations are equally likely to cause a social phenomenon (equal likelihood ratio). We then show that in a paired hypothesis question, people prefer an invisible-hand to an intentional-design explanation (posterior odds favor invisible hand). Given this, we conclude that people have a prior preference for invisible-hand explanations. We additionally examine individual differences in this prior preference, showing a small-but-significant relationship between a preference for intentional-design explanations, and conspiratorial beliefs.