文档介绍：European Journal of Personality, Eur. J. Pers. 26: 372–390 (2012)
Published online in Wiley Online Library () DOI:
Correlation and Causation in the Study of Personality
JAMES J. LEE*
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract: Personality psychology aims to explain the causes and the consequences of variation in behavioural traits.
Because of the observational nature of the pertinent data, this endeavour has provoked many controversies. In recent
years, puter scientist Judea Pearl has used a graphical approach to extend the innovations in causal inference
developed by Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright. Besides shedding much light on the philosophical notion of causality
itself, this graphical framework now contains many powerful concepts of relevance to the controversies just
mentioned. In this article, some of these concepts are applied to areas of personality research where questions of
causation arise, including the analysis of observational data and the ic sources of individual differences.
Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Key words: personality; causality; directed acyclic graph; structural equation modelling; behavioural ics
Consider the statement ‘rain and mud are correlated’. Proba- Contrary to these theorists, I take it for granted that causal
bility theory allows us to translate this bit of plain English knowledge is a desirable goal of the high-level sciences. In
into a mathematical language: recent years, puter scientist Judea Pearl and his
colleagues have greatly advanced the systematic pursuit of
P mud rain > P mud and P rain mud > P rain : this goal with a formalization of causality that draws on
ð j Þ ðÞ ð j Þ ðÞ graph theory. Sprites, Glymour, and Scheines (2001) and
Translated back into words, the probability of mud their collaborators have also made seminal contributions,
increases if you have already observed rain. But what about although their focus is much m