Counterfactual Thinking

What Is Counterfactual Thinking?

Counterfactual thinking is a well-developed line of research in psychology associated with attribution theory (Roese, 1997). Attribution theory Opens in new window focuses on how people try to make sense of the world by attributing causes to events they encounter (Weiner, et al., 1988).

When faced with an outcome that is unexpected and/or harmful, such as a car accident, people think of alternatives to the event. The original event is called the factual event while the alternatives are called default events. People engage in “what if” thinking. “What if I had been driving more slowly?” “What if it had not snowed last night?” (Wells & Gavanski 1989).

The default events people create are overwhelmingly an outcome that is more positive than the actual outcome; this is called upward counterfactual thinking.

Counterfactual thinking can be so powerful that we can change our own memories, adjusting to the facts, and creating new memories. It can happen to cover up trauma, or may be just excuses to avoid facing uncomfortable truths. It can explain what is otherwise unexplainable. This effect is increased by:

• Replication: If we can easily reconstruct events, as happened or as wished for.
• Closeness: If the unwanted event is close, such as just missing winning the lottery, by one number or just missing a taxi.
• Exception: If the event occurred because of a non-routine action that might not have happened.
• Controllability: If something could have been done, to avoid the event.
• Action:In the short-term, we regret actions that cause problems more than inaction that might have the same effect (although in the long-term, this effect is reversed).

Counterfactual thinking is limited to alternative versions of the past. People alter or mutate some antecedent/facet of the factual event in order to change the outcome (Roese, 1977). A mutation is the ability to change a factual event and to create alternative endings that undo the outcome.

A critical aspect of mutability is whether or not the alternative/default event can undo the negative outcome of the factual event. Events vary in their ability to be mutated. Some events easily provide default events that undo the outcome, while others prove difficult to find default events that might undo the outcome (Wells & Gavanski 1989).

Consider a machine fire crisis, for instance; it is easy to undo the crisis situation with the maintenance error; simply make sure proper maintenance is performed. The faculty machine part is more problematic to undo, especially if the fault cannot be found through simple visual inspection. How do you know if the part is faulty and may break?

Events that have controllable antecedents are more mutable than those with uncontrollable antecedents (Roese 1997). Human actions are viewed as more controllable, hence they are easier to mutate (Morris, et al. 1999). The mutability of an event affects causal attributions Opens in new window. If the default event undoes the crisis, people are more likely to judge the factual event as the cause of the outcome (Wells & Gavanski 1989).

An organization should be able to control maintenance to its machines but it is harder to control a defective part from a supplier that is difficult to detect. We posit that mutability is the key to understanding why stakeholders make distinctly different attributions of crisis responsibility for technical error accidents and recalls and human error accidents and recalls.

Functions of Counterfactual Thinking

Research has shown that counterfactual thinking serves several psychological functions, which may come down to three main ones:

Affective function

Counterfactuals influence emotional reactions. For example, after being involved in a car accident, thinking that things might have gone better (an upward counterfactual) is likely to trigger a negative emotion such as discomfort or regret. On the contrary, thinking that things could have gone worse (a downward counterfactual) is likely to trigger a positive emotion like relief. This seems to be due to a “contrast effect”.

An outcome, even a negative one, triggers more positive emotions when an even less desirable outcome is made salient to one’s mind. After a negative event, people have been shown to spontaneously generate more upward than downward counterfactuals. However, people may also react to the spontaneous upcoming of upward counterfactuals through intentionally focusing on the generation of downward counterfactuals. Actually, the more frequent generation of downward counterfactuals after an unsuccessful outcome has been shown to distinguish optimistic from pessimistic people.

Preparatory function

Besides cognitively restructuring the past, counterfactuals “construct” the future, that is, they can favor the preparation of future actions. Research on the phenomenon has shown that the best way to plan an action consists in mentally simulating both the process (i.e., the various steps) leading to an expected goal and the goal itself.

Similarly, counterfactual thinking is a form of “post hoc” simulation, including both the process leading to an expected outcome and the outcome itself. Thus, it may serve as “correction” of an unsatisfying past outcome, increasing the probability of getting a more satisfying outcome in case similar events occur again in the future. For example, Morris and Moore demonstrated that, in a training program including a series of virtual landings, pilots who had generated counterfactuals regarding their past performances offered better performances than those who had not generated counterfactuals.

Some counterfactuals have been shown to serve a preparative function better than others. This is the case for upward counterfactuals as compared with downward counterfactuals. In stating that things might have gone better if one or another element of a past event had been different, upward counterfactuals stress the negativity of the actual event, but at the same time they may serve a preparatory function, suggesting what might be done in the future to increase the possibility for similar events to have a better outcome.

The subtractive versus additive nature of counterfactuals has also been shown to matter with regard to their preparatory function. When we generate a subtractive counterfactual we remove an element which was present in the real scenario. For example: “If the government hadn’t approved that budget, the economic conditions of the country would be better now”.

By contrast, when we generate an additive counterfactual we introduce elements that were not present in the real scenario. For example: “If the government had taken special measures to reduce the inflation rate, the economic conditions of the country would be better now”.

While subtractive counterfactuals are contained to what already happened, additive counterfactuals are creative regarding what happened in the past, introducing new elements that were not part of reality in the past but might become real in the future. As such, they have been shown to contribute to preparing future action better than subtractive counterfactuals.

Explanatory function

Previous research demonstrate that generating and being exposed to counterfactuals regarding a given event may have consequences in terms of the explanation of the event and the perception of the event’s actors, especially the attribution of responsibility and blame.

The actor focused on as the person who might have changed the outcome if s/he had acted differently is often considered responsible for the obtained outcome. For example, after listening to the above-mentioned counterfactual by Antonio Di Pietro, one might think that the government was at least partly responsible for the terrible consequences of the earthquake.

In fact, when faced with a negative event, people have been shown to be more likely to attribute counterfactuals to individual actors rather than to external conditions, even when these conditions may have played a relevant role in causing the event. Focusing attention on actors who are perceived as capable of exerting some control on the event, instead of on fortuitous or uncontrollable external circumstances, would well serve the consolatory function of convincing people that the same negative event could be prevented from happening again in the future.