Cause and Effect Tips and Tricks for Government Exams

Introduction

• Cause and effect means that things happen because something prompted them to happen. A cause is why something happens. An effect is what happened.
• For example, you have a picnic planned for Sunday afternoon. However, the weather becomes stormy and you have to cancel your outdoor plans.
• In this situation, the cause is the stormy weather and the effect of that stormy weather is the picnic cancellation.

Theory

• The main aim of cause and effect questions is to derive the relationship between two given statements. The relationship that needs to be tested is whether the statements are causally related to each other. This means we need to find out whether one of the statements is a direct cause of the other or conversely whether one of the statements is a direct effect of the other.

Types

Causes

• Immediate Cause: It immediately precedes the effect. This cause shares the closest proximity with the effect with relation to time.
• Principal Cause: The most important reason behind the effect. The immediate cause can be the principal cause and vice versa.
• Independent cause: There is no relationship between the cause and the given effect.

Rule

• Cause is always antecedent. Naturally, the cause will occur before the effect. Hence, if two events are given then the effect that is chronologically antecedent to the other one can only be regarded as a possible cause.

Solved Examples