Chance as a (non)explanation: A cross-cultural examination of folk understanding of chance and coincidence.

Abstract

Causal explanations are a key component of human cognition. While we possess certain causal models of the world that offer satisfactory explanations for a range of phenomena, our cognitive capacities have their limits when dealing with the complexities of the world, leaving the causes of many events elusive. In this article, I integrate ethnographic and historical evidence to show that, despite our limited understanding of why certain events occur, people throughout human history and across diverse societies have seldom invoked "chance"-a concept that has gained significant importance in contemporary, modern societies-as an explanation. Instead, they frequently propose putative causal relationships or posit intermediary entities such as "luck" to account for why specific events unfold within their particular spatial-temporal contexts. I discuss the psychological, cognitive, and cultural evolutionary factors that hinder the development of chance-based explanations and argue that the conceptualization of chance as something measurable and its subsequent acceptance as a legitimate explanation emerged relatively late in human history, marking a pivotal intellectual shift with profound implications on how we perceive and manage uncertainty in our daily lives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).