Counterfactuals, Emotions, and Context the Present Research Context Effects Emotion Specificity Method Participants and Design

Participants recalled either a negative academic or interpersonal experience, and the relations among counterfactual thinking, negative emotions, and attributions of blame and control were examined. Situational context effects on attribution, counterfactual thinking, and emotion were observed, indicating a greater tendency toward self-focused cognition and emotion in the academic context than in the interpersonal context. Consistent with recent theorising, upward counterfactual thinking was associated with negative emotions of guilt, shame, regret, disappointment , and sadness. However, there was no indication that downward counterfactual thinking regulated emotion as previous literature suggests. Implications for functional and process theories of counterfactual thinking are discussed. Negative experiences: We all have them from time to time. And when we do, we know it because they grab our attention, and do so better than their positive or neutral counterparts (for reviews, see Peeters & Czapinski, 1990; Taylor, 1991). They provoke emotional reactions, but they also make us think: For instance, about who or what was to blame, about how a negative outcome was caused and how it might have been prevented or controlled, perhaps even about how the outcome might have turned out worse (see Weiner, 1985). Thesè`red alerts'' make good evolutionary sense: Negative experiences usually represent dis-confirmed expectancies (Olson, Roese, & Zanna, 1996) and, from a phenom-enological viewpoint, they evoke surprise (Kahneman & Miller, 1986). The negative affect and arousal produced by``bad experiences'' signals prediction failure, potential threat, and the need to plan more carefully for the future (Schwarz, 1990). Of course, emotionsÐpositive or negativeÐalso may systematically bias judgement and decision making in a number of ways (Schwarz, 2000). One of the curious things that people sometimes do after a negative experience is to imagine ways in which it might have turned out differently. Psychologists call this counterfactual thinking because such thoughts focus on events that, in actual fact, did not happen (for reviews, see Roese, 1997; Roese & Olson, 1995a). It is worth noting that, although a counterfactual thought often represents a relation between two nonfactual events, the relation may still be factual. For instance, after Jane learns that she just passed an important exam, she might think something likè`If only I had studied harder, I might have done a lot better''. De facto, Jane did not study harder and did not do better, but the counterfactual proposition describing the relation between studying and exam performance may very well be true. 1 Perhaps the term …