Preparative Counterfactual Thinking

Decision Making: How People Question Decisions Beforehand

In everyday life, people constantly question the decisions that they make in order to weigh the possible consequences and benefits. In some situations, people do this with great scrutiny or perhaps with not much thought applied. This process of alternate thought is termed ‘counterfactual thinking.’

According to Roese (1994), two types of counterfactual thoughts are preparative and affective counterfactual thoughts. Preparative counterfactual thoughts serve the purpose of enhancing a person’s learning experience. Affective counterfactual thoughts help people to feel more positive about a situation that would be considered negative. Affective counterfactual thinking may give a person a peace of mind regarding a situation, however it won't actually make the situation any better.

Free will beliefs probably won’t allow people to think about the ways that situations or things could be different than they are. Free will beliefs may be able to foretell the probability of someone thinking of preparative counterfactual thoughts, more specifically upward, additive and self-related counterfactuals. Free will is generally known as a person’s way of deciding how to act and preparative counterfactuals are used for decisions on how to act in the future (Pronin &

Kugler, 2010).
Consider the research conducted by Epstude & Roese (2008) in which participants were instructed to reflect on a hyptothetical or real situation, then to list counterfactual thoughts.

The researchers manipulated or measured free will belief and looked at the correlation between these beliefs and the quantity and nature of counterfactual thoughts. The authors thought that a high belief in free will would correlate to more counterfactual thoughts overall, than free will disbelief. A person remembering their negative and unpleasant moments would probably feel a sense negativity, however this type of reminiscing could help their

learning.
A similar research conducted Shani & Zeelenberg, (2007) by shows that people usually look to other alternatives when experiencing feelings of regret. In Study 2, the participants said they thought that this counterfactual information was going to have an upsetting effect on them. The decision to look for counterfactual information occurred after the initial decision and outcome, in which participants had an experienced emotion to compare to the expectation of being upset. This prompted the researchers to look for this information despite the fact that it could bring significant pain to the participants.
Research conducted by Petrocelli & Dowd examined how NFC affects punitive responses in regards to counterfactual thinking. One group of participants were required to read one of two various scenarios, then list “if only statements” regarding the events that were listed. Another group of participants were required to list whatever they thought about the events. A third group of people were required to write self-report measures that gave an idea about NFC and their counterfactual thinking habits when exposed to negative events. In these experiments, it was discovered that participants who had knowledge about the event prior to it were found to view bad outcomes more causal than participants who were known to be more ignorant. This research showed that counterfactual thinking is directly proportional to causal thoughts for people.

In order to further investigate this research , I conducted a survey with three random participants, assessing their thoughts on a situation where a paraplegic couple died when a bridge collapsed after a taxi driver refused to drive them prior. We used three groups-Changeable, Unchangeable and Neutral. We hypothesized that the taxi driver will receive more blame when he makes it over safely. Thus, the results in all three conditions should be similar.

References

Alquist, J., Ainsworth, S.E., Baumeister, R.F., Daly, M., Stillman, T.F. (2014). The Making of Might-Have-Beens: Effects of Free Will Belief on Counterfactual Thinking. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 41(2). 268-283. doi: 10.1177/0146167214563673.

Summerville, A. (2010). Counterfactual Seeking: The Scenic Overlook of the Road Not Taken. 1522-1533. Doi: 10.1177/0146167211413295.

Gilbert, E.A., Tenney, E.R., Holland, G.R., Spellman, B.A. Counterfactuals, Control and Causation: Why Knowledgeable People Get Blamed More. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 41 (5) 643-658 doi: 10.1177/0146167215572137