Explanations are human constructs developed to satisfy the innately human need for understanding. We know, for example, that children look longer at unexpected events than at expected ones, that they appreciate the value of evidence, and that they evaluate the quality of an explanation using roughly the same criteria as do adults. Whereas two year olds explain behavior in terms of desires and perceptions, by the age of three, children are able to distinguish causal powers from perceptual ones, and at about that age they begin to have explanatory beliefs and to make predictions. In general, exploration, experimentation and theory formation drive play for children.

Other innate human capabilities shape and support the explanations we produce including our language skills, our understanding of the basic physics of objects, our appreciation of the exclusivity of taxonomic classes, and the inferences that we make about the capabilities and knowledge of the recipients of our explanations. Importantly, humans have a strong need for intellectual closure/completion (the Zeigarnik effect), and they are willing to take steps to satisfy it.

Not all human capabilities support high-quality explanations, however. For example, people seem satisfied with shallow explanations, particularly those providing an illusion of depth. Similarly, humans tend to underestimate the role of less important influences in forming explanations, and they exhibit bias in selecting hypotheses based on data presentation order. In addition, humans are anthropomorphizers; that is, they look for (possibly non-existent) agents to explain unusual events. Finally, even though people are capable of effectively using induction, they typically resort to (possibly fallacious) abduction.

The lessons from human factors research on explanations are that, in order to produce good ones, we need to aware of human intellectual needs, and in order to critique explanations, we need to be aware of human limitations.