# Rethinking Causal Relationships Learning in Graph Neural Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.09613 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09613/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 22 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Dec 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [GNNExplainer: Generating Explanations for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03894/) (2019)
- [Explainability in Graph Neural Networks: A Taxonomic Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15445/) (2020)
- [ASAP: Adaptive Structure Aware Pooling for Learning Hierarchical Graph Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07979/) (2019)
- [Learning Causally Invariant Representations for Out-of-Distribution Generalization on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05441/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Causal Neighbourhood Learning for Invariant Graph Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17934/) (2026)
- [From Observations to Causations: A GNN-based Probabilistic Prediction Framework for Causal Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20349/) (2025)
- [A Closer Look at the Application of Causal Inference in Graph Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08890/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) demonstrate their significance by effectively modeling complex interrelationships within graph-structured data. To enhance the credibility and robustness of GNNs, it becomes exceptionally crucial to bolster their ability to capture causal relationships. However, despite recent advancements that have indeed strengthened GNNs from a causal learning perspective, conducting an in-depth analysis specifically targeting the causal modeling prowess of GNNs remains an unresolved issue. In order to comprehensively analyze various GNN models from a causal learning perspective, we constructed an artificially synthesized dataset with known and controllable causal relationships between data and labels. The rationality of the generated data is further ensured through theoretical foundations. Drawing insights from analyses conducted using our dataset, we introduce a lightweight and highly adaptable GNN module designed to strengthen GNNs' causal learning capabilities across a diverse range of tasks. Through a series of experiments conducted on both synthetic datasets and other real-world datasets, we empirically validate the effectiveness of the proposed module.