Counterfactual thinking or Hypotheticals that make you sad.

One of the things that I finds that I enjoy is the classic hypothetical situation. I enjoy thinking about them, asking other people about them, conversing about them and seeing what other people would do in or think about certain situations. Little did I know however that hypothetical situations actually have a term in social psychology. Counterfactual thinking is a term brought forward by Kahneman and Miller (1986). In counterfactual thinking, people imagine alternate outcomes to situations and events that did not happen. For example, counterfactual thinking was probably performed by players from Hendrix College after our lacrosse game. They may have imagined a world in which they had actually won the game, and for the first time ever had beaten Southwestern University in a lacrosse game. However, this was not what happened (Hell yeah). When people imagine situations where the outcome was better than what actually happened, they were likely to feel regret and sad feelings (Roese, 1997; Roese & Olson, 1995). Additionally, for players on the Southwestern roster, the story was completely different. After crushing their most hated opponent 12-6, players may have taken a moment to imagine a scenario in which the tables were turned and Hendrix had pulled out a victory for the first time ever. However, this exercise would elicit a different response for the Southwestern players. The Southwestern players would experience emotions of joy, satisfaction and relief, especially since for the first time in program history we are 2-0 and we kicked the crap out of our rival (Roese, 1997; Roese & Olson, 1995). Even though players on the awesome winning team may have endulged in such thinking, Byrne and McEleney (2000) found that people are more likely to engage in counterfactual thinking when they experience a negative outcome as opposed to a positive one when the negative outcome resulted from actions we took. So a player from Hendrix who took multiple terrible shots or gave up the ball to our defense was probably looking back at the game and kicking themselves many times over because they may have felt that their loss was due to their actions. Sucks to be that guy, but I am a happy camper on the opposite end of that with a 12-6 victory and a hat-trick on the day.

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References

Byrne, R. M. J., & McEleney, A. (2000). Counterfactual thinking about actions and failures to act. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1318-1331.

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

Roese, N. J. (1997). Counterfactual thinking. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 133-148

Roese, N. J., & Olson, J. M. (Eds). (1995). What might have been: The social psychology of counterfactual thinking. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.