# Iterative Partial Fulfillment of Counterfactual Explanations: Benefits and Risks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11111 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11111/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Mar 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6572/) (2014)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Deep Inside Convolutional Networks: Visualising Image Classification Models and Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6034/) (2013)
- [Explanation in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Social Sciences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.07269/) (2017)
- [Counterfactual Explanations without Opening the Black Box: Automated Decisions and the GDPR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00399/) (2017)
- [Explaining Machine Learning Classifiers through Diverse Counterfactual Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07697/) (2019)
- [Delving into Transferable Adversarial Examples and Black-box Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.02770/) (2016)
- [Fooling LIME and SHAP: Adversarial Attacks on Post hoc Explanation Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02508/) (2019)
- [Actionable Recourse in Linear Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.06514/) (2018)
- [Algorithmic Recourse: from Counterfactual Explanations to Interventions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06278/) (2020)
- [FACE: Feasible and Actionable Counterfactual Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.09369/) (2019)
- [Interpretable Counterfactual Explanations Guided by Prototypes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02584/) (2019)
- [Model-Agnostic Counterfactual Explanations for Consequential Decisions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11190/) (2019)
- [Learning Model-Agnostic Counterfactual Explanations for Tabular Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.09398/) (2019)
- [Counterfactual Explanations Can Be Manipulated](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02666/) (2021)
- [Efficient Search for Diverse Coherent Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.04909/) (2019)
- [Towards Robust and Reliable Algorithmic Recourse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13620/) (2021)
- [Do Feature Attribution Methods Correctly Attribute Features?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14403/) (2021)
- [Benchmarking Attribution Methods with Relative Feature Importance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.09701/) (2019)
- [If Only We Had Better Counterfactual Explanations: Five Key Deficits to Rectify in the Evaluation of Counterfactual XAI Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01035/) (2021)
- [On the Fairness of Causal Algorithmic Recourse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.06529/) (2020)
- [On Generating Plausible Counterfactual and Semi-Factual Explanations for Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.06399/) (2020)
- [Post hoc Explanations may be Ineffective for Detecting Unknown Spurious Correlation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04629/) (2022)
- [On the Adversarial Robustness of Causal Algorithmic Recourse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11313/) (2021)
- [Equalizing Recourse across Groups](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.03166/) (2019)
- [Fairness via Explanation Quality: Evaluating Disparities in the Quality of Post hoc Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.07277/) (2022)
- [Algorithmic Recourse in the Wild: Understanding the Impact of Data and Model Shifts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.11788/) (2020)
- [GeCo: Quality Counterfactual Explanations in Real Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01292/) (2021)
- [On the Robustness of Sparse Counterfactual Explanations to Adverse Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09051/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Explanations-Driven Active Feature Acquisition for Algorithmic Recourse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12179/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Counterfactual (CF) explanations, also known as contrastive explanations and algorithmic recourses, are popular for explaining machine learning models in high-stakes domains. For a subject that receives a negative model prediction (e.g., mortgage application denial), the CF explanations are similar instances but with positive predictions, which informs the subject of ways to improve. While their various properties have been studied, such as validity and stability, we contribute a novel one: their behaviors under iterative partial fulfillment (IPF). Specifically, upon receiving a CF explanation, the subject may only partially fulfill it before requesting a new prediction with a new explanation, and repeat until the prediction is positive. Such partial fulfillment could be due to the subject's limited capability (e.g., can only pay down two out of four credit card accounts at this moment) or an attempt to take the chance (e.g., betting that a monthly salary increase of 800 is enough even though 1,000 is recommended). Does such iterative partial fulfillment increase or decrease the total cost of improvement incurred by the subject? We mathematically formalize IPF and demonstrate, both theoretically and empirically, that different CF algorithms exhibit vastly different behaviors under IPF. We discuss implications of our observations, advocate for this factor to be carefully considered in the development and study of CF algorithms, and give several directions for future work.