Perhaps the most common misunderstanding comes in the area of penalties. Many people consider the punishment to be a direct result of the action, forgetting entirely that any concept of retribution requires the reaction (which are actions, not effects) of some third party.

For example, if you break your mother's favorite vase, and she sends you to bed without supper, most people would consider the punishment received to be a direct consequence of your breaking the vase. But this it not at all the case. The direct result of you breaking the vase is that the vase is broken. The things the vase contained are no longer contained by anything. They may be lying on the floor. If the vase held water (say, for flowers) then the water may be on the floor, causing whatever side effects that brings. But that action has nothing to do with your mother's choice to send you to bed, or your choice to follow her orders. While the events are related, the relationship between them is not one of direct cause and effect.

This is an important point. The choices that other people make on how to respond are not results of the actions you take. Now, there is a special case where the line gets fuzzy. In some situations, actions that you perform directly affect another person. Now, in many of these situations, the person is mature and capable enough to take whatever you did and be able to decide how they are going to respond. Those fall back into the previous category, and are not part of the special case situation.

What happens when you do something that the other person is not capable of responding to rationally? What if you press a button, hit an old wound, or catch someone by surprise? Is their reaction really a matter of their choice or is it a direct effect? That's a tricky one to resolve and usually boils down to the simple line between how someone feels about what you did, and what they actually do about it.