The role of thought-content and mood in the preparative benefits of upward counterfactual thinking

Abstract

Upward counterfactual thoughts identify how a prior outcome could have been better and have been shown to improve subsequent performance. Both the identification of corrective actions (content-specific effects) and the more general mobilization of effort as a result of negative affect (content-neutral effects) have been suggested to underlie performance benefits. The results of three experiments presented here indicate that counterfactual thoughts have broad benefits for performance, independent of their content and beyond the effects of planning. These benefits were consistently dependent upon the experience of negative affect, but were eliminated when negative affect could be (mis)attributed to an intervening task. This misattribution effect is consistent with the operation of a mood-as-input process in which affect informs judgments of goal progress. Overall, the findings suggest that the benefits of upward counterfactual thinking reflect more broad attempts to improve following a subjectively unsatisfactory performance.

Counterfactual thinking and repetitive thought in social anxiety

“…Indeed, Roese (1994) found that upward counterfactual thinking (U-CFT) was related to augmented intentions to perform more adaptive behaviours in the future and experimentally demonstrated that previous U-CFT did lead to a greater likelihood of actually carrying through with these intended adaptive behaviours. The finding that upward counterfactuals lead to subsequently improved performance has likewise been demonstrated in more recent studies (e.g., Myers et al, 2014). From this perspective, then, the negative affect induced by upward counterfactuals soon diminishes after a negative event, and may encourage some form of intention towards self-improvement.…”

The Functional Theory of Counterfactual Thinking: New Evidence, New Challenges, New Insights

“…We argue that this specification of moderation by domain, in terms of whether the environment in which the individual operates is characterized as simple vs complex, explains the discrepancy in results between those that have shown a beneficial effect of counterfactuals on performance (Dyczewski & Markman, 2012;Markman et al, 2008;Morris & Moore, 2000;Myers et al, 2014;Reichert & Slate, 2000;Roese, 1994;Wong, 2010) vs a null effect or performance decrement (Petrocelli & Harris, 2011;Petrocelli et al, 2013Petrocelli et al, , 2012. When the domain is simple and unicausal, measuring spontaneous counterfactuals may tap variability in causal accuracy, which may or may not connect to performance.…”

“…We emphasize that the content-specific and content-neutral pathways are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary: Both may occur at the same time, and they may interact. Nevertheless, Myers, McCrea, and Tyser (2014) provided evidence for the content-neutral pathway by using a method that held constant the content of the counterfactuals while examining the role of affect in boosting task persistence. In Study 1 of their paper, participants solved anagrams that were divided into two blocks.…”

“…Stated differently, in attempting experimentally to activate or prompt counterfactual thinking, there is no guarantee that an accurate causal inference will be formed and successfully deployed. This characterization helps to explain, in part, the variation in results of experimental manipulations of counterfactual thinking, some of which have resulted in performance benefits (Dyczewski & Markman, 2012;Markman et al, 2008;Morris & Moore, 2000;Myers et al, 2014;Reichert & Slate, 2000;Roese, 1994), whereas others have resulted in performance decrements (Petrocelli et al, 2012) or no effect at all (Petrocelli & Harris, 2011;Petrocelli et al, 2013).…”

The Effect of Counterfactual Potency on Behavioral Intentions

“…The first route, the content-neutral pathway, refers to the process by which counterfactual thinking impacts behaviors that are not relevant to a specific counterfactual. That is, regardless of counterfactual content, in this pathway, behavior changes occur mainly via negative affect (Myers, McCrea, & Tyser, 2014), enhanced motivational levels (e.g., Markman, McMullen, & Elizaga, 2008), and different cognitive procedures caused by counterfactual mindsets (e.g., Kray et al, 2009). In line with this pathway, counterfactuals can have diffuse motivational benefits by increasing negative affect and control perception (Smallman & Summerville, 2018).…”