Counterfactual Thinking Research Articles

Dissociated deficits of anticipated and experienced regret in at-risk suicidal individuals.

Decision-making deficits have been reported as trans-diagnostic characteristics of vulnerability to suicidal behaviors, independent of co-existing psychiatric disorders. Individuals with suicidal behaviors often regret their decision to attempt suicide and may have impairments in future-oriented processing. However, it is not clear how people with suicidal dispositions use future-oriented cognition and past experience of regret to guide decision-making. Here, we examined the processes of regret anticipation and experience in subclinical youth with and without suicidal ideation during value-based decision-making. In total, 80 young adults with suicidal ideation and 79 healthy controls completed a computational counterfactual thinking task and self-reported measures of suicidal behaviors, depression, anxiety, impulsivity, rumination, hopelessness, and childhood maltreatment. Individuals with suicidal ideation showed a reduced ability to anticipate regret compared to healthy controls. Specifically, suicidal ideators' experience of regret/relief was significantly different from that of healthy controls upon obtained outcomes, while their disappointment/pleasure experience was not significantly different from healthy controls. These findings suggest that young adults with suicidal ideation have difficulty predicting the consequences or the future value of their behavior. Individuals with suicidal ideation showed impairments in value comparison and flat affect to retrospective rewards, whereas individuals with high suicidality showed blunted affect to immediate rewards. Identifying the counterfactual decision-making characteristics of at-risk suicidal individuals may help to elucidate measurable markers of suicidal vulnerability and identify future intervention targets.

A mixed-method analysis of counterfactual thinking, negative event themes, and the transtheoretical model in a community sample of smokers.

The transtheoretical model has been used as a model of behavior change for tobacco users. However, it does not account for perceptions of past behavior that may provide additional guidance toward smoking cessation. No studies have examined associations between the transtheoretical model, content themes of smoking experiences, and counterfactual thoughts (i.e. "If only. . .then. . ."). Mturk participants (N = 178; 47.8% female) completed measures of smoking attitudes, behavior, and stage and processes of change use. Participants described a past negative smoking event and an event-related counterfactual thought-listing task. Participants in the precontemplation stage endorsed fewer processes of change. Also, participants in the action stage reported significantly more counterfactuals about cravings (e.g. If only I could have controlled my urge to smoke. . .) inferring that they may be identifying cravings or urges as relevant barriers toward smoking cessation. Identifying these self-relevant thoughts may provide additional ways to address and overcome barriers toward achieving long-term smoking cessation.

Study on the Influence of Failure Learning on the Performance of Start-ups

Many entrepreneurs have failed at one time or another. Entrepreneurs need to reflect on the failure and summarize the experience in time, so as to accumulate useful information for the second venture. Based on entrepreneurial learning theory and cognitive dissonance theory, this paper takes 258 entrepreneurial teams in the Yangtze River Delta as research objects, explores the impact of entrepreneurial failure learning on entrepreneurial performance, and verifies the moderating effects of ascending counterfactual thinking and descending counterfactual thinking. The results show that entrepreneurial failure learning has a significant positive impact on the performance of new ventures. Upward counterfactual thinking positively moderates the relationship between failure learning and entrepreneurial performance, but downward counterfactual thinking has no significant moderating effect between failure learning and entrepreneurial performance. After the downward counterfactual thinking is added, the triple interaction effect is significant, that is, the upward counterfactual thinking and the downward counterfactual thinking jointly positively regulate the relationship between failure learning and entrepreneurial performance.

학령기 단순언어장애 아동의 반사실적 사고 능력

연구목적: 사실과 반대되는 정보에 근거하여 추론하는 능력은 상대방의 의도를 파악하고 사건의 원인과 결과를 판단하는 데 도움을 주기 때문에 대화를 이해하는 데 도움이 된다. 본 연구는 학령기 단순언어장애 아동이 실제 일어난 사건의 원인과 결과에 상반되는 생각을 할 수 있는지 알아보기 위해 반사실적 사고 능력을 조사하였다. 연구방법: 초등 2-3학년 단순언어장애 아동 17명, 동일언어연령의 일반 아동 17명, 동일생활연령의 일반 아동 17명을 대상으로 실시하였다. 반사실적 사고 과제는 선행 반사실 과제와 결과 반사실 과제로 구성되었다. 선행 반사실 과제의 질문은 아동에게 결과를 바꿀 수 있는 대안을 추론하도록 지시하였고 결과 반사실 과제의 질문은 선행 사건을 바꾸었을 때 달라진 결과를 추론하도록 하였다. 연구결과: 선행 반사실 과제와 결과 반사실 과제 모두에서 단순언어장애 집단이 언어연령일치 집단 및 생활연령일치 집단에 비해 유의미하게 낮은 수행을 보였다. 선행 반사실 과제와 결과 반사실 과제 모두에서 생활연령일치 집단, 언어연령 일치 집단, 단순언어장애 집단 순으로 높은 점수를 얻었다. 세 집단 모두에서 결과 반사실 과제 수행이 선행반사실 과제 수행보다 유의미하게 높았다. 반사실 사고 과제 수행에서 집단과 과제 유형 사이의 상호작용이 통계적으로 유의미하였는데 이는 언어연령일치 집단에서 결과 반사실 과제와 선행 반사실 과제 수행 차이가 다른 두 집단에 비해서 더 두드러진 데에 기인하는 것으로 보였다. 결론: 단순언어장애 아동은 발생한 사건의 반대 사실을 추론하여 사건의 대안을 찾는 데 어려움을 보였다. 이는 단순언어장애 아동들의 언어 사용에 부정적인 영향을 미칠 것이다.

Dimensions of inattention: Cognitive, behavioral, and affective consequences.

Inattention to one's on-going task leads to well-documented cognitive, behavioral, and physiological consequences. At the same time, the reliable association between mind-wandering and negative mood has suggested that there are affective consequences to task inattention as well. We examined this potential relationship between inattention and mood in the following study. Six hundred and fifty-five participants completed self-report questionnaires related to inattentive thinking (i.e., attentional lapses, daydreaming, mindfulness, rumination, reflection, worry, postevent processing, inattentiveness, and counterfactual thinking), a questionnaire about depressive symptoms, and a questionnaire about anxiety symptoms. First, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to identify potential underlying constructs of types of inattentive thinking. Using ordinary least squares extraction and Oblimin rotation, a three-factor model demonstrated suitable fit, broadly representing mind-wandering/inattentive consequences, repetitive negative thinking, and reflective/introspective thinking. Second, after eliminating measures that did not strongly load on any factor, structural equation modeling was conducted and found that the relationship between mind-wandering and depression was partially explained by repetitive negative thinking, whereas the relationship between mind-wandering and anxiety was fully explained by repetitive negative thinking. The present findings suggest that understanding how inattentive thoughts are interrelated not only influences mood and affect but also reveals important considerations of intentionality, executive functioning, and qualitative styles of these thoughts.

Should I have been more careful or less careless? The comparative nature of counterfactual thoughts alters judgments of their impact

Counterfactual thoughts inherently imply a comparison of a given reality to an alternative state of affairs. Previous research mainly considered consequences of different counterfactual types, namely focus (other vs. self), structure (additive vs. subtractive), and direction (upward vs. downward). The current work investigates whether a ‘more-than’ versus ‘less-than’ comparative nature of counterfactual thoughts alters judgments of their impact. Four experiments demonstrated that self-generated other- (Studies 1 and 3) and self-focused (Study 2) upward counterfactuals are judged more impactful when they entail ‘more-than’ rather than ‘less-than’ comparisons. Judgments include plausibility and persuasiveness, as well as counterfactuals' likelihood to change future behavior and feelings. Self-reported ease of thought generation and (dis)fluency gauged by difficulty in thought generation was similarly affected. This more-less asymmetry reversed in Study 3 for downward counterfactual thoughts, with ‘less-than’ counterfactuals being judged more impactful and easier to generate. Further attesting to the role of ease, when spontaneously generating comparative counterfactuals, participants correctly provided more ‘more-than’ upward counterfactuals, but more ‘less-than’ downward counterfactuals (Study 4). These findings delineate one of the to date few conditions for a reversal of the more-less asymmetry and provide support for a correspondence principle, the simulation heuristic, and thus the role of ease in counterfactual thinking. They suggest that especially ‘more-than’ counterfactuals following negative events, and ‘less-than’ counterfactuals following positive events, are likely to have an important impact on people. (226 words)

Individual differences in the frequency of voluntary & involuntary episodic memories, future thoughts, and counterfactual thoughts.

Voluntary and involuntary mental time travel can take the form of episodic memory, episodic future thinking, and episodic counterfactual thinking. This study uses an individual-differences approach to understand why people engage in these forms of mental time travel. The individual-differences variables include trait-level personality, boredom proneness, depression, anxiety, stress, emotion regulation, mindfulness, mind-wandering, positive and negative affect, rumination, optimism, thinking styles, and time perspective. Across two studies, our results indicate that individual differences underlie these forms of mental time travel. The most unique, episodic counterfactual thinking, was alone positively correlated with negative emotionality and negatively correlated with optimism. We also observe differences as a function of voluntariness and discuss these findings in relation to the cognitively demanding nature of constructing future and counterfactual thoughts. We discuss the importance of distinguishing voluntary from involuntary thinking and assessing episodic counterfactual thinking in relation to episodic memory and episodic future thinking.

Upward counterfactual thinking and state depression: investigating a causal relationship

Upward counterfactual thinking and state depression: investigating a causal relationship

Using a counterfactual-based intervention to change eating intentions: Results from Hispanic and non-Hispanic undergraduate and community samples

Finding ways to improve eating behavior has become a major focus of interventions designed to improve health outcomes. Counterfactual thinking (i.e., mental simulations of how a past outcome could have been different) is a cognitive strategy that has been shown to improve behavior regulation and could be a promising intervention to improve eating behavior. The purpose of the current research was to examine the effect of a counterfactual-based intervention to shift contemplation to change eating behavior, motivation towards eating healthier, and intentions to engage in healthier eating behaviors. Participants in both studies were randomly assigned to either a counterfactual-based intervention or a control condition. In Study 1, those in the counterfactual-based intervention condition reported an increase in readiness to change their eating behavior, higher extrinsic motivation towards eating healthy, and higher intentions to eat healthy compared to those in the control condition. Within the counterfactual condition, individuals who self-identified as Hispanic had higher intentions to use their counterfactual strategies than those who identified as non-Hispanic. Study 2 found similar results using a more diverse community sample. Those in the counterfactual-based intervention condition reported an increase in readiness to change, intentions to eat healthy, and intentions to use their counterfactual strategies, with this effect being stronger for self-identified Hispanic participants. These studies provide initial evidence for the use of a counterfactual-based intervention to improve eating behavior in diverse populations.

Coping During Crisis: An Intervention on Gratitude and Personal Well-Being During COVID-19

For the current study, we investigated how a gratitude intervention of counterfactual thinking influenced COVID-19 experiences, dispositional gratitude levels, and psychological well-being. College students from a university in the Pacific Northwest (N = 152; Mage = 22.5, SD = 2.6) completed an online survey where they were randomly assigned into either a gratitude treatment group, where they practiced counterfactual thinking, or a control group, where counterfactual thinking was not practiced, and self-reported their COVID-19 experiences, gratitude levels, and psychological well-being. We sought to explore whether counterfactual thinking could mitigate the effects of COVID-19 by increasing gratitude and personal well-being. Statistical analyses indicated that the treatment group exposed to counterfactual thinking reported higher gratitude levels than the control group, t(115) = 2.81, p = .006; t(113) = 3.01, p = .003. A series of Pearson correlations found a small, statistically significant negative relationship between COVID-19 experiences and personal well-being, r(125) = –.23, p = .02. It was found that gratitude and personal well-being were statistically significant and positive, r(125) = .77, p = .001; r(121) = .85, p = .001. Results showed a statistically significant difference between the gratitude control and gratitude treatment groups regarding personal well-being when controlling for the severity of COVID-19 experiences, F(2, 102) = 5.97, p = .004, partial eta squared = .11. This study contributes to existing literature by providing an empirical demonstration that counterfactual thinking can improve gratitude and personal well-being, as well as mitigate negative COVID-19 experiences.

EDITOR'S NOTES—COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING: A NECESSITY FOR PRACTITIONERS AND RESEARCHERS

EDITOR'S NOTES—COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING: A NECESSITY FOR PRACTITIONERS AND RESEARCHERS

Epistemological Randomization, or On Creativity in Science

This article attempts to comprehend the problem within the methodology of science. The authors compare the concepts of creativity and heuristics and suggest a semantic differentiation between them, and also offer their own viewpoint on the main types of activity corresponding to these concepts. The problem of creativity is associated with the characteristics that a person must have in order to solve tasks and problems. The authors consider the relationship between the problem and the task, as well as some major techniques to tackle them. Here they substantiate the idea of a wider adaptation of randomization as a special tactic, that is, going beyond the narrow framework of mathematical statistics and empirical research. In this context, the authors introduce the notion of “epistemological randomization”, designed to denote the following of open rationality without abandoning the rational way of solving scientific problems. This technique is viewed as a phenomenon related to the counterfactual thinking. The last part of the article proposes a typology of personalities as problem and task solvers – adaptive, heuristic and creative personalities. It is assumed that the “heuristic” personality aims to complete tasks, which, unlike problems, have a final solution, while the “creative” personality aims to expand the problem field. The latter type is characterized as capable and inclined to use the “epistemological randomization”, the techniques of lateral thinking and other techniques that suggest several methods of solving problems and tasks at once.

特质性焦虑与负性事件反事实思维的相关研究

特质性焦虑与负性事件反事实思维的相关研究

Bodily skills in a virtual environment (on the material of Cybersports)

The aim of this article is to show what role the players' bodily practices play in cybersports, given that the competition takes place in a virtual environment. The role of players' bodily practices is revealed within two general frameworks related to the concept of sport, namely, sport as a demonstration of mastery of some physical or/and intellectual skills. It is shown that in order to clarify the role of player bodies in cybersports, it is necessary to make a distinction between two optics of counterfactual thinking. On the one hand, counterfactuality is part of the gaming in cybersport, which allows planning and evaluating strategy. On the other hand, it is part of the player's need to respond quickly to hypothetical events in the virtual world. These actions are not the exact similarities of bodily reactions in the conditions of the physical world, since they are produced through the control of game controllers, which are extensions into the virtual world. The author concludes that the counterfactuals turns out to be directly embedded in the bodily practices of the player, forcing the latter to find a balance between the quick reactions hypotheticality of what is happening on the screen.

Mental control and attributions of blame for negligent wrongdoing.

Third-personal judgments of blame are typically sensitive to what an agent knows and desires. However, when people act negligently, they do not know what they are doing and do not desire the outcomes of their negligence. How, then, do people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing? We propose that people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing based on perceived mental control, or the degree to which an agent guides their thoughts and attention over time. To acquire information about others' mental control, people self-project their own perceived mental control to anchor third-personal judgments about mental control and concomitant responsibility for negligent wrongdoing. In four experiments (N = 841), we tested whether perceptions of mental control drive third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing. Study 1 showed that the ease with which people can counterfactually imagine an individual being non-negligent mediated the relationship between judgments of control and blame. Studies 2a and 2b indicated that perceived mental control has a strong effect on judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing and that first-personal judgments of mental control are moderately correlated with third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing. Finally, we used an autobiographical memory manipulation in Study 3 to make personal episodes of forgetfulness salient. Participants for whom past personal episodes of forgetfulness were made salient judged negligent wrongdoers less harshly compared with a control group for whom past episodes of negligence were not salient. Collectively, these findings suggest that first-personal judgments of mental control drive third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing and indicate a novel role for counterfactual thinking in the attribution of responsibility. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Spontaneous Counterfactual Inference Task: Misremembering What Might Have Been.

Counterfactuals, thoughts about "what might have been," play an important role in causal judgment, emotion, and motivation, and spontaneously arise during daily life. However, current methods to measure spontaneous counterfactual thinking are cumbersome and subjective. The current research adapts a paradigm from the Spontaneous Trait Inference literature to develop the Spontaneous Counterfactual Inference measure (SCFI), which uses false recognition of counterfactual statements as a measure of spontaneous counterfactual thought. Studies 1a and 1b demonstrate that the SCFI is sensitive to precursors of counterfactual thinking: norm violation and counterfactual closeness. Study 2 demonstrates that the SCFI converges with the generation of counterfactual statements in an open-ended writing task. The SCFI also predicts two important consequences of counterfactual thought, blame (Study 3), and intention endorsement (Study 4). The SCFI thus offers a new tool for researchers interested in counterfactual thinking.

Regret in organisational life: An overview and research agenda

AbstractRegret is a remarkably common occurrence and a fundamental part of life. Defined as ‘the emotion that we experience when realising or imagining that our current situation would have been better, if only we had decided differently’, regret comes along with unpleasant feelings and a wish to undo one's present circumstance. Characterised by self‐blame for a poorly made decision, regret materialises following a comparison with a perceived superior alternative outcome, otherwise known as upward counterfactual thinking. Because it originates from this cognitive process, academic analysis of regret developed alongside the scholarship on counterfactual thinking, which burgeoned from the 1980s. However, in the work domain, the study of regret has remained elusive. In the following, we provide an overview of the concept's scholarly study, both more generally and then specifically in work and organisational study. After introducing the articles in this special section, we outline some further avenues for scholarly work on regret in the context of work and organisations.

Counterfactual Thinking and the Identity Problem: The Casus of Communication about Genetic Risks

The subject of this article is counterfactual thinking as a tool in geneticist-patient communication under conditions of uncertainty. The article focuses on the use of the counterfactual narrative as one of the main components of doctor-patient communication in the framework of making decisions about future treatment. The conditions for the use of the counterfactual narrative are considered, taking into consideration two features: the logic of predetermination and the influence of overpersonal forces and notions of kinship that contribute to the deindividualization of the patient. Based on A.S. Karpenko's formulation of the concept of possibility, a heuristic approach to sketching possible scenarios for treatment during genetic counseling is outlined. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of the problem of self-future identity, constructed by the patient in the counterfactual narrative. This problem is examined using two thought experiments. The first thought experiment (concerning the fate of the unborn child - D. Bunin) reveals the identity problem itself. The second (concerning non-derministic behavior of a flipped coin - C. Dorst) shows how this problem is disclosed under conditions of uncertainty. It is shown that in creating possible scenarios of disease and its treatment with counterfactuals it is important to take into account "necessary properties" (U. Eco) of the patient, focusing on qualitative, not numerical identity. In the last section of the article this conclusion is justified in the light of the concept of narrative identity, through which the counterfactual can be revealed.

“I could have been dead”: Counterfactual thinking and posttraumatic stress disorder in individuals directly exposed to the 2011 Oslo bombing.

“I could have been dead”: Counterfactual thinking and posttraumatic stress disorder in individuals directly exposed to the 2011 Oslo bombing.

A Call to More Imaginative Research into Creative Achievement

ABSTRACT Psychologist J. P. Guildford issued a challenge to study creativity nearly 70 years ago. How well have we done and what might the next steps be in our endeavors to understand creativity? The field of creativity research has examined the internal thinking process of creativity, largely through measures of divergent thinking and remote associates. We have tracked the creative successes of people assumed to be of high talent and high intelligence. And, we have evaluated creative products. More recently, we have correlated various cognitive and personality measures, purported to be linked to creativity, with brain structure and function. In spite of this flurry of activity, there are some problems. These assessments do not provide specific or significant predictive validity of creative achievement. Similarly, while Guilford desired to separate creativity from the purview of intelligence in his challenge, these constructs appear to be as entangled today as they were in the 1950ʹs. When viewing all predictive variables of creative achievement across person, process, and product, we found that the personality trait of openness to experience – provides the best combination of specificity and predictive power. Finally, we join others in calling for more study of imagination as a mental tool that individuals at all skill levels use to predict outcomes, visualize scenarios, and engage in counterfactual thinking – in service of creative achievement.