Does Facilitation Style Shape Causality? A Comparative Reflection on Two Participatory Causal Loop Diagramming Sessions on PhD

Thursday, July 16, 2026, 8:00 PM

Session: SOC Poster Session (Virtual 2) (Virtual)

Participatory Group Model Building (GMB) relies on structured interaction between a facilitation team and stakeholders to elicit and represent shared mental models as system diagrams. Within this tradition, causal loop diagrams (CLDs) are widely used to make feedback structures explicit and to support collective learning about system dynamics. A core methodological assumption is that facilitation helps participants surface causal relationships that already exist in their mental models — rather than introducing structure that was not there to begin with. This abstract questions that assumption. We present a comparative reflection on two CLDs produced in a single workshop on PhD wellbeing, conducted at NOVA FCT on December 2024. The two diagrams were generated by separate groups working on an identical problem definition—"How do our PhDs impact our wellbeing?"—but under markedly different facilitation styles. The resulting structural differences between the two maps raise a question that is rarely foregrounded in the GMB literature: to what extent does facilitation style not merely assist the emergence of causality, but actively co-produce it?