How do people interpret ostensibly causal information? The present research investigates the relation of personal control and belief in a just world to causal judgments of real world news headlines and articles. College student participants viewed headlines of varying causality (e.g., "Recession causes increase in teen dating violence") with short article excerpts and then rated their perception of the causality of the variables from that headline (e.g., "Does recession cause an increase in teen dating violence?"). Results suggest personal control is a motivational factor influencing perceptions of causality, and belief in a just world is an individual difference associated with perceptions of causality. In Study 1, participants who reported that powerful others more determined their life outcomes gave lower ratings of causality, and belief in a just world was associated with increased perceptions of causality. In Study 2, personal control was primed experimentally and the belief in a just world relationship was replicated. In both studies, results are presented for the perceived believability of the headline/article pairs and the relationship between both outcome variables and individual difference measures. Implications and future directions are given for the study of perceptions of causality.