What if...?

What if things had happened differently? Nobody will ever know, but thinking these kinds of thoughts, and playing out past situations that have not occurred is known as counterfactual thinking (Kahneman & Miller, 1986). Counterfactual thinking can be both a positive and negative thing, as if you imagine the situation ending worse than what actually happened, then you would probably feel a sort of relief. However, if you imagine the situation could have ended up better, you would probably feel disappointed or depressed. According to past research, many people's main regret centers include education, career and romance, due to opportunities that we did not capitalize on (Roese & Summerville, 2005).

To give a clear example of counterfactual thinking in effect, another study found that students are more likely to feel regret, when they change a test answer from right to wrong, rather than failing to fix a mistake (Kruger, et al, 2005). Counterfactual thinking can manifest itself in ways that not many people would expect. Medvec et al (1995) conducted a study where the participants ranked the happiness of Olympic gold medal, silver medal, and bronze medal winners (by examining the video of them collecting their medals). It turns out that the bronze medal winners seemed to be much happier than the silver medal winners. This is because the silver medal winners kept wondering what would have happened if they had trained harder.

I'm not sure how often other (normal) people counterfactually think, but I definitely tend to do this a lot. One of the more memorable time that I have done this, is probably when I got into a pretty big argument with one of my friends a while back. Taking account that I was much younger (around 14 years old), and definitely a lot stupider, I still feel that I could have handled the situation a lot better. At the time I definitely thought back on the situation wondering what I could have done in order to prevent the situation. I recall the negative symptoms of this kind of counterfactual thinking, as I felt regret for at least a month after that.

Word Count: 352

References

Kahneman, D., & Miller, D.T. (1986). Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives. Psychological 
          Review, 93, 136-153

Kruger, J., Wirtz, D., & Miller, D.T. (2005). Counterfactual thinking and the first instinct fallacy. Journal of 
        Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 725-735
Medvec, V.H., Madey, S.F., & Gilovich, T. (1995). When less is more: Counterfactual thinking and
         satisfaction among Olympic medalists. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 603-610.

Roese, N.J., & Summerville, A. (2005). What we regret most....and why. Personality and Social
         Psychology Bulletin, 31, 1273-1285