Speaker
Description
Correlation does not imply causation – but then, what does it tell us about the world out there? In my talk, I will provide a non-technical introduction to directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) as a tool to understand the relationship between correlation and causation. Three simple fundamental causal structures can go a long way to improve how we reason about the world, both in everyday life and in research, which I will illustrate with various examples. For example, does caffeine during pregnancy cause miscarriages? Isn’t it surprising that hunter-gatherers live nearly as long as we do, once they have survived infancy? And what was up with those claims that children with COVID-19 are just as infectious as adults?
About:
Julia Rohrer is a personality psychologist by training whose work covers a broad range of topics, including the effects of birth order, age patterns in personality, and the determinants of subjective well-being. Her methodological interests include all things causal inference, as well as research transparency and, more generally, how we can improve psychological science. She received her doctoral degree as a fellow of the International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course in 2019 and has since then been an academic assistant at Leipzig University.
