Causality and counterfactuals
Channel: Mikko Rönkkö
Date: 2020-01-29

The counterfactual model is one of the most commonly used theories for
causality in social sciences. The idea of the counterfactual model is that there are two potential outcome for an individual. For example, in an experiment, an individual can be assigned either to receive a treatment or to be in the control group that does not receive a treatment. However, because an individual can be assigned to just one group, only one of these potential outcomes is observed and the other one, called the counterfactual outcome, is not. The model defines the causal effect as the difference between these two outcomes. For example, in the case of experiments, the causal effect on an individual level is defined as the difference after the treatment and the counterfactual case had the person not received the treatment.