1932

Abstract

People spontaneously create counterfactual alternatives to reality when they think “if only” or “what if” and imagine how the past could have been different. The mind computes counterfactuals for many reasons. Counterfactuals explain the past and prepare for the future, they implicate various relations including causal ones, and they affect intentions and decisions. They modulate emotions such as regret and relief, and they support moral judgments such as blame. The loss of the ability to imagine alternatives as a result of injuries to the prefrontal cortex is devastating. The basic cognitive processes that compute counterfactuals mutate aspects of the mental representation of reality to create an imagined alternative, and they compare alternative representations. The ability to create counterfactuals develops throughout childhood and contributes to reasoning about other people's beliefs, including their false beliefs. Knowledge affects the plausibility of a counterfactual through the semantic and pragmatic modulation of the mental representation of alternative possibilities.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033249
2016-01-04
2024-03-28
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/psych/67/1/annurev-psych-122414-033249.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033249&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

Literature Cited

  1. Alicke MD, Buckingham J, Zell E, Davis T. 2008. Culpable control and counterfactual reasoning in the psychology of blame. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 34:1371–81 [Google Scholar]
  2. Alquist JL, Ainsworth SE, Baumeister RF, Daly M, Stillman TF. 2015. The making of might-have-beens: effects of free will belief on counterfactual thinking. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 41:2268–83 [Google Scholar]
  3. Bacon AM, Walsh CR, Martin L. 2013. Fantasy proneness and counterfactual thinking. Personal. Individ. Differ. 54:4469–73 [Google Scholar]
  4. Barbey AK, Krueger F, Grafman J. 2011. Architecture of counterfactual thought in the prefrontal cortex. Predictions in the Brain: Using Our Past to Generate a Future M Bar 40–57 New York: Oxford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
  5. Beck SR, Carroll DJ, Brunsdon VEA, Gryg CK. 2011. Supporting children's counterfactual thinking with alternative modes of responding. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 108:190–202 [Google Scholar]
  6. Beck SR, Guthrie C. 2011. Almost thinking counterfactually: children's understanding of close counterfactuals. Child Dev. 82:41189–98 [Google Scholar]
  7. Beck SR, Robinson EJ, Carroll DJ, Apperly IA. 2006. Children's thinking about counterfactuals and future hypotheticals as possibilities. Child Dev. 77.2:413–26 [Google Scholar]
  8. Begeer S, Terwogt MM, Lunenburg P, Stegge H. 2009. Additive and subtractive counterfactual reasoning of children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 39.11:1593–97 [Google Scholar]
  9. Beike DR, Markman KD, Karadogan F. 2009. What we regret most are lost opportunities: a theory of regret intensity. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 35.3:385–97 [Google Scholar]
  10. Branscombe NR, Owen S, Garstka TA, Coleman J. 1996. Rape and accident counterfactuals: Who might have done otherwise and would it have changed the outcome?. J. Appl. Soc. Psychol. 26.12:1042–67 [Google Scholar]
  11. Bucciarelli M, Khemlani S, Johnson-Laird PN. 2008. The psychology of moral reasoning. Judgm. Decis. Mak. 3:2121–39 [Google Scholar]
  12. Byrne RMJ. 2005. The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  13. Byrne RMJ. 2007. Précis of The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality. Behav. Brain Sci. 30:439–53 [Google Scholar]
  14. Byrne RMJ, Johnson-Laird PN. 2009. “If” and the problems of conditional reasoning. Trends Cogn. Sci. 13:282–87 [Google Scholar]
  15. Byrne RMJ, McEleney A. 2000. Counterfactual thinking about actions and failures to act. J. Exp. Psychol.: Learn. Mem. Cogn. 26:1318–31 [Google Scholar]
  16. Byrne RMJ, Segura S, Culhane R, Tasso A, Berrocal P. 2000. The temporality effect in counterfactual thinking about what might have been. Mem. Cogn. 28:264–81 [Google Scholar]
  17. Byrne RMJ, Tasso A. 1999. Deductive reasoning with factual, possible, and counterfactual conditionals. Mem. Cogn. 27.4:726–40 [Google Scholar]
  18. Callander G, Brown GP, Tata P, Regan L. 2007. Counterfactual thinking and psychological distress following recurrent miscarriage. J. Reprod. Infant Psychol. 25:151–65 [Google Scholar]
  19. Camille N, Coricelli G, Sallet J, Pradat-Diehl P, Duhamel JR, Sirigu A. 2004. The involvement of the orbitofrontal cortex in the experience of regret. Science 304:56741167–70 [Google Scholar]
  20. Catellani P, Covelli V. 2013. The strategic use of counterfactual communication in politics. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 32:4480–89 [Google Scholar]
  21. Chen J, Chiu CY, Roese NJ, Tam KP, Lau IYM. 2006. Culture and counterfactuals: on the importance of life domains. J. Cross-Cult. Psychol. 37:175–84 [Google Scholar]
  22. Coricelli G, Critchley HD, Joffily M, O'Doherty JP, Sirigu A, Dolan RJ. 2005. Regret and its avoidance: a neuroimaging study of choice behavior. Nat. Neurosci. 8.9:1255–62 [Google Scholar]
  23. Davis CG, Lehman DR, Wortman CB, Silver RC, Thompson SC. 1995. The undoing of traumatic life events. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 21:109–24 [Google Scholar]
  24. Davison IM, Feeney A. 2008. Regret as autobiographical memory. Cogn. Psychol. 57.4:385–403 [Google Scholar]
  25. De Brigard F, Addis DR, Ford JH, Schacter DL, Giovanello KS. 2013. Remembering what could have happened: neural correlates of episodic counterfactual thinking. Neuropsychologia 51:122401–14 [Google Scholar]
  26. De Brigard F, Szpunar KK, Schacter DL. 2013. Coming to grips with the past effect of repeated simulation on the perceived plausibility of episodic counterfactual thoughts. Psychol. Sci. 24:71329–34 [Google Scholar]
  27. De Vega M, Urrutia M. 2011. Counterfactual sentences activate embodied meaning: an action sentence compatibility effect study. J. Cogn. Psychol. 23:962–73 [Google Scholar]
  28. Dixon J, Byrne RMJ. 2011. “If only” counterfactual thoughts about exceptional actions. Mem. Cogn. 39.7:1317–31 [Google Scholar]
  29. Drayton S, Turley-Ames KJ, Guajardo NR. 2011. Counterfactual thinking and false belief: the role of executive function. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 108.3:532–48 [Google Scholar]
  30. Effron DA, Miller DT, Monin B. 2012. Inventing racist roads not taken: the licensing effect of immoral counterfactual behaviors. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 103:6916–32 [Google Scholar]
  31. Egan S, Byrne RMJ. 2012. Inferences from counterfactual threats and promises. Exp. Psychol. 59:4227–35 [Google Scholar]
  32. Egan S, Garcia-Madruga J, Byrne RMJ. 2009. Indicative and counterfactual “only if” conditionals. Acta Psychol. 132:3240–49 [Google Scholar]
  33. El Leithy S, Brown GP, Robbins I. 2006. Counterfactual thinking and posttraumatic stress reactions. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 115:3629–35 [Google Scholar]
  34. Epstude K, Jonas KJ. 2015. Regret and counterfactual thinking in the face of inevitability: the case of HIV positive men. Soc. Psychol. Personal. Sci. 6:157–63 [Google Scholar]
  35. Epstude K, Roese NJ. 2008. The functional theory of counterfactual thinking. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 12:2168–92 [Google Scholar]
  36. Ferguson HJ, Sanford AJ. 2008. Anomalies in real and counterfactual worlds: an eye- movement investigation. J. Mem. Lang. 58:609–26 [Google Scholar]
  37. Ferguson HJ, Sanford AJ, Leuthold H. 2008. Eye-movements and ERPs reveal the time course of processing negation and remitting counterfactual worlds. Brain Res. 1236:113–25 [Google Scholar]
  38. Ferrante D, Girotto V, Stragà M, Walsh C. 2013. Improving the past and the future: a temporal asymmetry in hypothetical thinking. J. Exp. Psychol.: Gen. 142:123–27 [Google Scholar]
  39. Frosch CA, Byrne RMJ. 2012. Causal conditionals and counterfactuals. Acta Psychol. 14:54–66 [Google Scholar]
  40. Gerlach KD, Dornblaser DW, Schacter DL. 2014. Adaptive constructive processes and memory accuracy: consequences of counterfactual simulations in young and older adults. Memory 22:1145–62 [Google Scholar]
  41. Gillan CM, Morein-Zamir S, Kaser M, Fineberg NA, Sule A. et al. 2014. Counterfactual processing of economic action-outcome alternatives in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Biol. Psychiatry 75:8639–46 [Google Scholar]
  42. Gilovich T, Medvec VH. 1995. The experience of regret: what, when, and why. Psychol. Rev. 102:379–95 [Google Scholar]
  43. Ginsberg ML. 1986. Counterfactuals.. Artif. Intell. 30.1:35–79 [Google Scholar]
  44. Girotto V, Ferrante D, Pighin S, Gonzalez M. 2007. Postdecisional counterfactual thinking by actors and readers. Psychol. Sci. 18:510–15 [Google Scholar]
  45. Girotto V, Legrenzi P, Rizzo A. 1991. Event controllability in counterfactual thinking. Acta Psychol. 78:111–33 [Google Scholar]
  46. Goldinger SD, Kleider HM, Azuma T, Beike DR. 2003. “Blaming the victim” under memory load. Psychol. Sci. 14:181–85 [Google Scholar]
  47. Gomez Beldarrain M, Garcia-Monco JC, Astigarraga E, Gonzalez A, Grafman J. 2005. Only spontaneous counterfactual thinking is impaired in patients with prefrontal cortex lesions. Cogn. Brain Res. 24.3:723–26 [Google Scholar]
  48. Goodwin GP. 2014. Is the basic conditional probabilistic?. J. Exp. Psychol.: Gen. 143:1214–41 [Google Scholar]
  49. Grant CM, Riggs KJ, Boucher J. 2004. Counterfactual and mental state reasoning in children with autism. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 34:2177–88 [Google Scholar]
  50. Greene JD, Nystrom LE, Engell AD, Darley JM, Cohen JD. 2004. The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron 44:389–400 [Google Scholar]
  51. Guajardo NR, Parker J, Turley-Ames K. 2009. Associations among false belief understanding, counterfactual reasoning, and executive function. Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 27:3681–702 [Google Scholar]
  52. Gubbins E, Byrne RM. 2014. Dual processes of emotion and reason in judgments about moral dilemmas. Think. Reason. 20:2245–68 [Google Scholar]
  53. Guglielmo S, Malle BF. 2010. Can unintended side effects be intentional? Resolving a controversy over intentionality and morality. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 36:121635–47 [Google Scholar]
  54. Guttentag R, Ferrell J. 2008. Children's understanding of anticipatory regret and disappointment. Cogn. Emot. 22.5:815–32 [Google Scholar]
  55. Habib M, Cassotti M, Borst G, Simon G, Pineau A. et al. 2012. Counterfactually mediated emotions: a developmental study of regret and relief in a probabilistic gambling task. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 112:2265–74 [Google Scholar]
  56. Hafner RJ, White MP, Handley SJ. 2012. Spoilt for choice: the role of counterfactual thinking in the excess choice and reversibility paradoxes. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 48:128–36 [Google Scholar]
  57. Harris PL, German TP, Mills P. 1996. Children's use of counterfactual thinking in causal reasoning. Cognition 61:233–59 [Google Scholar]
  58. Hilton D, Schmeltzer C. 2015. A matter of detail: matching counterfactuals to actual cause in pre-emption scenarios. Manuscript under review
  59. Hooker C, Roese NJ, Park S. 2000. Impoverished counterfactual thinking is associated with schizophrenia. Psychiatry 63:4326–35 [Google Scholar]
  60. Johnson-Laird PN, Byrne RMJ. 2002. Conditionals: a theory of meaning, pragmatics, and inference. Psychol. Rev. 109:646–78 [Google Scholar]
  61. Johnson-Laird PN, Khemlani SS, Goodwin GP. 2015. Logic, probability, and human reasoning. Trends Cogn. Sci. 19:4201–14 [Google Scholar]
  62. Juhos C, Quelhas AC, Byrne RMJ. 2015. Reasoning about intentions: counterexamples to reasons for actions. J. Exp. Psychol.: Learn. Mem. Cogn. 41:155–76 [Google Scholar]
  63. Kahneman D, Miller DT. 1986. Norm theory: comparing reality to its alternatives. Psychol. Rev. 93.2:136–53 [Google Scholar]
  64. Kahneman D, Tversky A. 1982a. The simulation heuristic. Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases D Kahneman, P Slovic, A Tversky 201–8 New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
  65. Kahneman D, Tversky A. 1982b. The psychology of preferences. Sci. Am. 246.1:160–73 [Google Scholar]
  66. Knobe J. 2003. Intentional action and side-effects in ordinary language. Analysis 63:190–93 [Google Scholar]
  67. Knobe J. 2010. Person as scientist, person as moralist. Behav. Brain Sci. 33:353–65 [Google Scholar]
  68. Kocovski NL, Endler NS, Rector NA, Flett GL. 2005. Ruminative coping and post-event processing in social anxiety. Behav. Res. Ther. 43:8971–84 [Google Scholar]
  69. Kominsky JF, Phillips J, Gerstenberg T, Lagnado D, Knobe J. 2015. Causal superseding. Cognition 137:196–209 [Google Scholar]
  70. Kratzer A. 2012. Modals and Conditionals: New and Revised Perspectives New York: Oxford Univ. Press
  71. Kray LJ, George LG, Liljenquist KA, Galinsky AD, Tetlock PE, Roese NJ. 2010. From what might have been to what must have been: Counterfactual thinking creates meaning. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 98.1:106–18 [Google Scholar]
  72. Kulakova E, Aichhorn M, Schurz M, Kronbichler M, Perner J. 2013. Processing counterfactual and hypothetical conditionals: an fMRI investigation. NeuroImage 72:265–71 [Google Scholar]
  73. Larsen JT, McGraw AP, Mellers BA, Cacioppo JT. 2004. The agony of victory and thrill of defeat: mixed emotional reactions to disappointing wins and relieving losses. Psychol. Sci. 15:5325–30 [Google Scholar]
  74. Lewis D. 1973. Counterfactuals Oxford, UK: Blackwell
  75. Ma J, Roese NJ. 2014. The maximizing mindset. J. Consum. Res. 41:71–92 [Google Scholar]
  76. Macrae CN, Milne AB, Griffiths RJ. 1993. Counterfactual thinking and the perception of criminal behaviour. Br. J. Psychol. 84.2:221–26 [Google Scholar]
  77. Malle BF, Monroe AE, Guglielmo S. 2014. A theory of blame. Psychol. Inq. 25:2147–86 [Google Scholar]
  78. Mandel DR, Dhami MK. 2005. “What I did” versus “what I might have done”: effect of factual versus counterfactual thinking on blame, guilt, and shame in prisoners. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 41.6:627–35 [Google Scholar]
  79. Mandel DR, Lehman DR. 1996. Counterfactual thinking and ascriptions of cause and preventability. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 71.3:450–63 [Google Scholar]
  80. Markman KD, Gavanski I, Sherman SJ, McMullen MN. 1993. The mental simulation of better and worse possible worlds. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 29.1:87–109 [Google Scholar]
  81. Markman KD, McMullen MN. 2003. A reflection and evaluation model of comparative thinking. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 7:3244–67 [Google Scholar]
  82. Markman KD, McMullen MN, Elizaga RA. 2008. Counterfactual thinking, persistence, and performance: a test of the reflection and evaluation model. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 44:2421–28 [Google Scholar]
  83. Markman KD, Miller A. 2006. Depression, control, and counterfactual thinking: functional for whom?. J. Soc. Clin. Psychol. 25:210–27 [Google Scholar]
  84. Markman KD, Mizoguchi N, McMullen MN. 2008. “It would have been worse under Saddam”: implications of counterfactual thinking for beliefs regarding the ethical treatment of prisoners of war. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 44:3650–54 [Google Scholar]
  85. Markman KD, Tetlock PE. 2000. I couldn't have known: accountability, foreseeability, and counterfactual denials of responsibility. Br. J. Soc. Psychol. 39:313–25 [Google Scholar]
  86. McCloy R, Byrne RMJ. 2000. Counterfactual thinking about controllable actions. Mem. Cogn. 28:1071–78 [Google Scholar]
  87. McCloy R, Byrne RMJ. 2002. Semifactual “even if” thinking. Think. Reason. 8:41–67 [Google Scholar]
  88. McCrea SM. 2008. Self-handicapping, excuse making, and counterfactual thinking: consequences for self-esteem and future motivation. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 95:274–92 [Google Scholar]
  89. McEleney A, Byrne RMJ. 2006. Spontaneous causal and counterfactual thoughts. Think. Reason. 12:235–55 [Google Scholar]
  90. McGraw AP, Mellers BA, Tetlock PE. 2005. Expectations and emotions of Olympic athletes. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 41:4438–46 [Google Scholar]
  91. McMullen MN, Markman KD. 2000. Downward counterfactuals and motivation: the wake-up call and the Pangloss effect. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 26:5575–84 [Google Scholar]
  92. McNamara P, Durso R, Brown A, Lynch A. 2003. Counterfactual cognitive deficit in persons with Parkinson's disease. J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 74:81065–70 [Google Scholar]
  93. Medvec VH, Madey SF, Gilovich T. 1995. When less is more: counterfactual thinking and satisfaction among Olympic medalists. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 69:4603 [Google Scholar]
  94. Meehan JE, Byrne RMJ. 2005. Children's counterfactual thinking: the temporal order effect. Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society BG Bara, L Barsalou, M Bucciarelli 1467–73 Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
  95. Migliore S, Curcio G, Mancini F, Cappa SF. 2014. Counterfactual thinking in moral judgment: an experimental study. Front. Psychol. 5:451 [Google Scholar]
  96. Miller DT, Gunasegaram S. 1990. Temporal order and the perceived mutability of events: implications for blame assignment. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 59:61111–18 [Google Scholar]
  97. Moreno-Rios S, Garcia-Madruga J, Byrne RMJ. 2008. Semifactual “even if” reasoning. Acta Psychol. 128:197–209 [Google Scholar]
  98. Morris MN, Moore PC. 2000. The lessons we (don't) learn: counterfactual thinking and organizational accountability after a close call. Adm. Sci. Q. 45:737–65 [Google Scholar]
  99. Morrison M, Roese N. 2011. Regrets of the typical American: findings from a nationally representative sample. Soc. Psychol. Personal. Sci. 2:576–83 [Google Scholar]
  100. N'gbala A, Branscombe NR. 1995. Mental simulation and causal attribution: when simulating an event does not affect fault assignment. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 31:139–62 [Google Scholar]
  101. Ndubuisi B, Byrne RMJ. 2013. Intentionality and choice. Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society M Knauff, M Pauen, N Sebanz, I Wachsmuth 1970–75 Austin, TX: Cogn. Sci. Soc.
  102. Nickerson R. 2015. Conditional Reasoning Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press
  103. Nicolle A, Bach DR, Frith C, Dolan RJ. 2011. Amygdala involvement in self-blame regret. Soc. Neurosci. 6.2:178–89 [Google Scholar]
  104. Niedenthal PM, Tangney JP, Gavanski I. 1994. “If only I weren't” versus “if only I hadn't”: distinguishing shame and guilt in counterfactual thinking. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 67.4:585–95 [Google Scholar]
  105. Nieuwland MS, Martin AE. 2012. If the real world were irrelevant, so to speak: the role of propositional truth-value in counterfactual sentence comprehension. Cognition 122.1:102–9 [Google Scholar]
  106. O'Connor E, McCormack T, Feeney A. 2014. Do children who experience regret make better decisions? A developmental study of the behavioral consequences of regret. Child Dev. 85:51995–2010 [Google Scholar]
  107. Over DE, Hadjichristidis C, Evans JSTB, Handley SJ, Sloman SA. 2007. The probability of causal conditionals. Cogn. Psychol. 54:62–97 [Google Scholar]
  108. Page CM, Colby PM. 2003. If only I hadn't smoked: the impact of counterfactual thinking on a smoking-related behavior. Psychol. Mark. 20:11955–76 [Google Scholar]
  109. Pearl J. 2013. Structural counterfactuals: a brief introduction. Cogn. Sci. 37:6977–85 [Google Scholar]
  110. Pellizzoni S, Girotto V, Surian L. 2010. Beliefs and moral valence affect intentionality attributions: the case of side effects. Rev. Philos. Psychol. 1:2201–9 [Google Scholar]
  111. Perner J, Sprung M, Steinkogler B. 2004. Counterfactual conditionals and false belief: a developmental dissociation. Cogn. Dev. 19:2179–201 [Google Scholar]
  112. Petrocelli JV, Percy EJ, Sherman SJ, Tormala ZL. 2011. Counterfactual potency. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 100:130–46 [Google Scholar]
  113. Pighin S, Byrne RMJ, Ferrante D, Gonzalez M, Girotto V. 2011. Counterfactual thoughts about experienced, observed, and narrated events. Think. Reason. 17:2197–211 [Google Scholar]
  114. Quelhas AC, Byrne RMJ. 2003. Reasoning with deontic and counterfactual conditionals. Think. Reason. 9:143–65 [Google Scholar]
  115. Rafetseder E, Schwitalla M, Perner J. 2013. Counterfactual reasoning: from childhood to adulthood. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 114.3:389–404 [Google Scholar]
  116. Riggs KJ, Peterson DM, Robinson EJ, Mitchell P. 1998. Are errors in false belief tasks symptomatic of a broader difficulty with counterfactuality?. Cogn. Dev. 13:173–90 [Google Scholar]
  117. Rim S, Summerville A. 2014. How far to the road not taken? The effect of psychological distance on counterfactual direction. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 40:3391–401 [Google Scholar]
  118. Rips LJ. 2010. Two causal theories of counterfactual conditionals. Cogn. Sci. 34:2175–221 [Google Scholar]
  119. Ritov I, Baron J. 1990. Reluctance to vaccinate: omission bias and ambiguity. J. Behav. Decis. Mak. 3:263–77 [Google Scholar]
  120. Roese NJ. 1997. Counterfactual thinking. Psychol. Bull. 121:1133–48 [Google Scholar]
  121. Roese NJ, Epstude KAI, Fessel F, Morrison M, Smallman R. et al. 2009. Repetitive regret, depression, and anxiety: findings from a nationally representative survey. J. Soc. Clin. Psychol. 28:6671–88 [Google Scholar]
  122. Roese NJ, Park S, Smallman R, Gibson C. 2008. Schizophrenia involves impairment in the activation of intentions by counterfactual thinking. Schizophr. Res. 103:1–3343–44 [Google Scholar]
  123. Roese NJ, Summerville A. 2005. What we regret most…and why. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 31:91273–85 [Google Scholar]
  124. Royzman EB, Goodwin GP, Leeman RF. 2011. When sentimental rules collide: “norms with feelings” in the dilemmatic context. Cognition 121:1101–14 [Google Scholar]
  125. Rye MS, Cahoon MB, Ali RS, Daftary T. 2008. Development and validation of the counterfactual thinking for negative events scale. J. Personal. Assess. 90:3261–69 [Google Scholar]
  126. Sanna LJ, Turley KJ. 1996. Antecedents to spontaneous counterfactual thinking: effects of expectancy violation and outcome valence. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 22:9906–19 [Google Scholar]
  127. Sanna LJ, Turley-Ames KJ, Meier S. 1999. Mood, self-esteem, and simulated alternatives: thought-provoking affective influences on counterfactual direction. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 76:4543–58 [Google Scholar]
  128. Santamaria C, Espino O, Byrne RMJ. 2005. Counterfactual and semifactual conditionals prime alternative possibilities. J. Exp. Psychol.: Learn. Mem. Cogn. 31:1149–54 [Google Scholar]
  129. Santos LR, Rosati AG. 2015. The evolutionary roots of human decision making. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 66:321–47 [Google Scholar]
  130. Schacter DL, Benoit RG, De Brigard F, Szpunar KK. 2015. Episodic future thinking and episodic counterfactual thinking: intersections between memory and decisions. Neurobiol. Learn. Mem. 117:14–21 [Google Scholar]
  131. Segura S, Fernandez-Berrocal P, Byrne RMJ. 2002. Temporal and causal order effects in counterfactual thinking. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 55:1295–305 [Google Scholar]
  132. Sloman SA, Lagnado DA. 2005. Do we “do”?. Cogn. Sci. 29:5–39 [Google Scholar]
  133. Smallman R, McCulloch KC. 2012. Learning from yesterday's mistakes to fix tomorrow's problems: when functional counterfactual thinking and psychological distance collide. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 42:3383–90 [Google Scholar]
  134. Spellman BA, Mandel DR. 1999. When possibility informs reality: counterfactual thinking as a cue to causality. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 8.4:120–23 [Google Scholar]
  135. Stalnaker RC. 1968. “A theory of conditionals.”. Studies in Logical Theory N Rescher 98–112 Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell [Google Scholar]
  136. Sweeny K, Vohs KD. 2012. On near misses and completed tasks: the nature of relief. Psychol. Sci. 23:464–68 [Google Scholar]
  137. Teigen KH, Jensen TK. 2011. Unlucky victims or lucky survivors? Spontaneous counterfactual thinking by families exposed to the tsunami disaster. Eur. Psychol. 16:148–57 [Google Scholar]
  138. Tetlock PE, Belkin A. 1996. Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological and Psychological Perspectives Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
  139. Thompson V, Byrne RMJ. 2002. Reasoning counterfactually: making inferences about things that didn't happen. J. Exp. Psychol.: Learn. Mem. Cogn. 28:1154–70 [Google Scholar]
  140. Tykocinski OE, Steinberg N. 2005. Coping with disappointing outcomes: retroactive pessimism and motivated inhibition of counterfactuals. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 41:5551–58 [Google Scholar]
  141. Tyser MP, McCrea SM, Knuepfer K. 2012. Pursuing perfection or pursuing protection? Self-evaluation concerns and the motivational consequences of counterfactual thinking. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 42:372–82 [Google Scholar]
  142. Uttich K, Lombrozo T. 2010. Norms inform mental state ascriptions: a rational explanation for the side-effect effect. Cognition 116:187–100 [Google Scholar]
  143. Van Hoeck N, Begtas E, Steen J, Kestemont J, Vandekerckhove M, Van Overwalle F. 2014. False belief and counterfactual reasoning in a social environment. NeuroImage 90:315–25 [Google Scholar]
  144. Van Hoeck N, Ma N, Ampe L, Baetens K, Vandekerckhove M, Van Overwalle F. 2013. Counterfactual thinking: an fMRI study on changing the past for a better future. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 8:556–64 [Google Scholar]
  145. Walsh CR, Byrne RMJ. 2004. Counterfactual thinking: the temporal order effect. Mem. Cogn. 32:369–78 [Google Scholar]
  146. Walsh CR, Byrne RMJ. 2007. How people think “if only…” about reasons for actions. Think. Reason. 13.4:461–83 [Google Scholar]
  147. Waytz A, Hershfield HE, Tamir DI. 2015. Mental simulation and meaning in life. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 108:2336–55 [Google Scholar]
  148. Weisberg DP, Beck SR. 2010. Children's thinking about their own and others' regret and relief. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 106:2184–91 [Google Scholar]
  149. Wells GL, Taylor BR, Turtle JW. 1987. The undoing of scenarios. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 53:3421–30 [Google Scholar]
  150. Williamson T. 2007. Philosophical knowledge and knowledge of counterfactuals. Grazer Philos. Stud. 74.1:89–124 [Google Scholar]
  151. Wimmer H, Perner J. 1983. Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition 13:1103–28 [Google Scholar]
  152. Yeh D, Gentner D. 2005. Reasoning counterfactually in Chinese: picking up the pieces. Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society2410–15 Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
  153. Zeelenberg M, Pieters R. 2007. A theory of regret regulation 1.0. J. Consum. Psychol. 17:13–18 [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033249
Loading
  • Article Type: Review Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error