>> So yeah, I mean, it's really hard to prove better a causes b or b causes a.
But there's one point where you can definitely prove the causal direction,
which is from this manipulation.
So the objective system aspect that you manipulate,
that cannot be influenced by anything because you randomize your participants.
So there's no way anything can influence which version they got.
So the objective system aspect is always, so to say, on the left side of the model,
on the side where it can only cause things, it cannot be caused by anything.
Now, in terms of how the different subjective variables
influence each other and how they influence behavior or
behavior influences them, there is always the possibility that
there's two possible causal directions, from a to b or from b to a.
And the best way to resolve this problem is to refer to theory.
Typically, we believe that intentions influence actual behavior,
that attitudes influence actual behavior.
So the pathway typically in most cases,
unless you are an exception within most cases,
it's the case that your attitude influences your behavior or
your perception of something influences your attitudes.
So in that sense, the framework really incorporates this
kind of psychological theory where some objective perception influences
my subjective perception, influences my attitudes, influences my behavior.
And so typically, that's the causal pathway that is kind of the most
conservative of the two to test, and you should always in your papers make the note
that there might be some feedback loops going on.
But this is typically the most obvious pathways to test, and so
you should test typically those pathways.
If you really can't figure it out,
you can specify a correlation rather than a causal path, but it's typically
better to make sure that the model fits to actually have these causal paths.
So you have to think about that a little bit and
make sure that what you are testing kind of makes sense theoretically speaking.
That's why you need to have this theoretical model before you start
actually evaluating.