“If only” counterfactual thoughts about exceptional actions

‘If only’ counterfactuals about exceptional actions

People create counterfactual ‘if only’ alternatives that change exceptional actions to be normal (e.g., ‘if only he had placed his usual small bet he would have lost less money’). Two experiments show that this effect is reversed when an exceptional alternative leads to a better outcome. Experiment 1 demonstrated the standard effect: an exceptional action that leads to a bad outcome is changed ...

“If only I could stop generating counterfactual thoughts”: When counterfactual thinking interferes with academic performance☆

Counterfactual thoughts and judgments about morally good actions

Evaluating the morality of an action is affected by thoughts about whether the outcome might have turned out differently. We report experimental results that show a moral action effect occurs for judgments about morally good actions. Participants read stories about a morally elevating situation, e.g., an agent is found to be a match as a bone-marrow donor for someone else. The agent decided to ...

Indicative and counterfactual 'only if' conditionals.

We report three experiments to test the possibilities reasoners think about when they understand a conditional of the form 'A only if B' compared to 'if A then B'. The experiments examine conditionals in the indicative mood (e.g., A occurred only if B occurred) and counterfactuals in the subjunctive mood (A would have occurred only if B had occurred). The first experiment examines the conjuncti...

Mental models and counterfactual thoughts about what might have been.

Counterfactual thoughts about what might have been ('if only em leader ') are pervasive in everyday life. They are related to causal thoughts, they help people learn from experience and they influence diverse cognitive activities, from creativity to probability judgements. They give rise to emotions and social ascriptions such as guilt, regret and blame. People show remarkable regularities in t...