What is cause and effect definition

Other prompts may ask you to explain the cause and effect relationship. Look for the verb explain as a signal word so you answer the prompt correctly. In some paragraphs, the cause-and-effect relationship is not directly stated.

Use clues from the paragraph to identify a cause-and-effect relationship. Step 3 : Look for effects that are also causes. Effects can form a chain in which one effect goes on to cause a second effect, which may then cause a third effect and so on. Study this example:. When people cut down trees to clear land, they destroy the habitats of birds. This reduces the number of nest sites. As a result, fewer baby birds are hatched, and the bird population declines.

That is, they begin with a topic sentence and this sentence is followed by specific supporting details. For example, if the topic sentence introduces an effect, the supporting sentences all describe causes. Here is an example:.

There are several reasons for this occurrence. First, the increasing industrialization of the nineteenth century resulted in the creation of many factory jobs, which tended to be located in cities. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights.

Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Richard Nordquist. English and Rhetoric Professor. Richard Nordquist is professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at Georgia Southern University and the author of several university-level grammar and composition textbooks.

For example, a doctor can easily tell when you have a fever and trouble breathing. Those are the effects of something unknown—the cause. You might wonder what a sandwich made out of pickles, peanut butter, and tartar sauce would taste like. Sometimes, a cause-and-effect relationship resembles a domino effect or chain reaction , in which one original cause leads to an effect that then becomes a cause of another effect, which becomes the next cause, creating a chain of events.

For example, a man offends his neighbor by insulting him the cause. His neighbor becomes angry the effect and the next cause and he in turn tells his friends the next effect and cause. His friends also become angry another effect and cause and tell their friends another effect and cause. All the friends gather to confront the original man the final effect. By insulting his neighbor, the original man caused a series of actions connected together a chain that resulted in him being confronted by an angry mob.

A common diagram that is used to analyze cause-and-effect is known as a fishbone or Ishikawa diagram. SPC for Excel. I believe in science and listening to experts on cause and effect but also thank goodness I was wearing this specific t-shirt so the Celtics were able to hang on and win that game. Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect.

True or False? Cause-and-effect is a relationship between two events in which both events happen at the same time. As an example of good science-and-society policymaking, the history of fluoride may be more of a cautionary tale.