Abstract
Upward counterfactual thoughts identify how a prior outcome could have been better and have been shown to improve subsequent performance. Both the identification of corrective actions (content-specific effects) and the more general mobilization of effort as a result of negative affect (content-neutral effects) have been suggested to underlie performance benefits. The results of three experiments presented here indicate that counterfactual thoughts have broad benefits for performance, independent of their content and beyond the effects of planning. These benefits were consistently dependent upon the experience of negative affect, but were eliminated when negative affect could be (mis)attributed to an intervening task. This misattribution effect is consistent with the operation of a mood-as-input process in which affect informs judgments of goal progress. Overall, the findings suggest that the benefits of upward counterfactual thinking reflect more broad attempts to improve following a subjectively unsatisfactory performance.
Highlights
Set 1 scores, negative mood, implementation intention condition, and counterfactual thought condition were entered into the model in an initial step, and all two-way interactions of negative mood and the condition variables were entered into the model in a second step
Given that the strategy mentioned in the implementation intention and counterfactual thought involved using a clue only after 60 seconds had elapsed, we examined the effects of negative mood and condition on the number of clues that were used between 50 and 70 seconds in set 2 (M = 0.91, SD = 1.88), controlling for the number of clues that were used between 50 and 70 seconds in set 1 (M = 0.45, SD = 0.83)
It is possible that the lack of a counterfactual effect on clue use reflects a Type II error, the benefits of counterfactual thinking among those high in negative mood held even when controlling for this behavior
Summary
Participants were 95 (39 male, 56 female) students at a German university. Two male participants mentioned either implementation intentions or “if- intentions” during debriefing and were excluded from the analyses. At the conclusion of the first set, they were provided feedback including total score, number of items correctly solved, number of items skipped, number of clues used, and number of items in which the time limit was exceeded At this point, participants were randomly assigned to one of two counterfactual conditions. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two counterfactual conditions Those in the counterfactual condition read a statement supposedly made by a past participant, indicating that his or her performance would have been improved by purchasing a clue for the difficult items (“If I had bought a clue after 60 seconds for anagrams that were difficult to solve, my total score on this test would have been better.”). They were fully debriefed and received compensation for their participation
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