The effect of controllability and causality on counterfactual thinking

Previous research on counterfactual thoughts about prevention suggests that people tend to focus on enabling rather than causing events and controllable rather than uncontrollable events. Two experiments explore whether counterfactual thinking about enablers is distinct from counterfactual thinking about controllable events. We presented participants with scenarios in which a cause and an enabler contributed to a negative outcome. We systematically manipulated the controllability of the cause and the enabler and asked participants to generate counterfactuals. The results indicate that when only the cause or the enabler is controllable participants undid the controllable event more often. However, when the cause and enabler are matched in controllability participants undid the enabler slightly more often. The findings are discussed in the context of the mental model, functional and judgement dissociation theories as well as previous research on counterfactual thinking. The importance of controllability and possible reasons for the special role of enablers are considered.     

Effect of counterfactual and factual thinking on causal judgements

The significance of counterfactual thinking in the causal judgement process has been emphasized for nearly two decades, yet no previous research has directly compared the relative effect of thinking counterfactually versus factually on causal judgement. Three experiments examined this comparison by manipulating the task frame used to focus participants' thinking about a target event. Prior to making judgements about causality, preventability, blame, and control, participants were directed to think about a target actor either in counterfactual terms (what the actor could have done to change the outcome) or in factual terms (what the actor had done that led to the outcome). In each experiment, the effect of counterfactual thinking did not differ reliably from the effect of factual thinking on causal judgement. Implications for research on causal judgement and mental representation are discussed.     

When attention matters: The curious incident of the wandering mind

Attention plays an essential role in the construction of the mental models necessary to make sense of ongoing events. In this article, we consider the implications of temporary inattention during reading for the construction and updating of the situation model during text comprehension. We examined how self-reported mind wandering during reading relates to the online construction of the situation model of the narrative, which in this case involved the pseudonym used by a villain in a detective novella. In successful readers, mind wandering without awareness, referred to as zoning out, was less frequent when the text revealed a clue about the villain's identity. Additional analyses indicated that mind wandering interfered with the construction of the situation model independent of the participants' ability to retrieve factual information. The analysis of the temporal consequences of zoning out indicated that lapses had the greatest influence when they occurred early in the narrative. These results confirm the intuition that zoning out during reading is an indication that the construction of the situation model has gone awry, and underscore the fact that our ability to understand ongoing events depends on the ability to pay attention when it matters.     

The Role of Counterfactual Thinking and Causal Attribution in Accident-Related Judgments

The effects of counterfactual thinking and causal attribution on accident-related judgments were investigated. Subjects read about a couple who died in an automobile accident where mutability of the outcome was varied. Mutability refers to the extent that a factual event can be mentally altered, with mutable outcomes more easily imagined otherwise than immutable outcomes. In comparison to the immutable scenario, participants reading the mutable scenario saw the accident as more avoidable, ascribed a greater causal role to the accident perpetrator, and perceived the perpetrator having more causal control over the couple's deaths. In addition to increased anger, a harsher financial penalty was levied against the accident perpetrator by participants in the mutable than in the immutable condition. Multiple regression analysis supported the efficacy of attribution theory to explain the affective and behavioral consequences of counterfactual thinking in accident-related judgments.     

When Possibility Informs Reality: Counterfactual Thinking as a Cue to Causality

People often engage in counterfactual thinking, that is, imagining alternatives to the real world and mentally playing out the consequences. Yet the counterfactuals people tend to imagine are a small subset of those that could possibly be imagined. There is some debate as to the relation between counterfactual thinking and causal beliefs. Some researchers argue that counterfactual thinking is the key to causal judgments; current research suggests, however, that the relation is rather complex. When people think about counterfactuals, they focus on ways to prevent bad or uncommon outcomes; when people think about causes, they focus on things that covary with outcomes. Counterfactual thinking may affect causality judgments by changing beliefs about the probabilities of possible alternatives to what actually happened, thereby changing beliefs as to whether a cause and effect actually covary. The way in which counterfactual thinking affects causal attributions may have practical consequences for mental health and the legal system.     

儿童反事实思维的研究述评

反事实思维一直以来是成人认知研究中备受关注的课题,近年来有关儿童反事实思维的发展也逐步引起研究者的兴趣。本研究论述了儿童反事实思维产生的早期信号、年龄变化、出现错误的原因以及与心理理论、因果推理、假装等心理状态之间的关系,最后在评述前人研究的基础上提出未来的研究方向。     

Précis of The rational imagination: how people create alternatives to reality

The human imagination remains one of the last uncharted terrains of the mind. People often imagine how events might have turned out "if only" something had been different. The "fault lines" of reality, those aspects more readily changed, indicate that counterfactual thoughts are guided by the same principles as rational thoughts. In the past, rationality and imagination have been viewed as opposites. But research has shown that rational thought is more imaginative than cognitive scientists had supposed. In The Rational Imagination, I argue that imaginative thought is more rational than scientists have imagined. People exhibit remarkable similarities in the sorts of things they change in their mental representation of reality when they imagine how the facts could have turned out differently. For example, they tend to imagine alternatives to actions rather than inactions, events within their control rather than those beyond their control, and socially unacceptable events rather than acceptable ones. Their thoughts about how an event might have turned out differently lead them to judge that a strong causal relation exists between an antecedent event and the outcome, and their thoughts about how an event might have turned out the same lead them to judge that a weaker causal relation exists. In a simple temporal sequence, people tend to imagine alternatives to the most recent event. The central claim in the book is that counterfactual thoughts are organised along the same principles as rational thought. The idea that the counterfactual imagination is rational depends on three steps: (1) humans are capable of rational thought; (2) they make inferences by thinking about possibilities; and (3) their counterfactual thoughts rely on thinking about possibilities, just as rational thoughts do. The sorts of possibilities that people envisage explain the mutability of certain aspects of mental representations and the immutability of other aspects.     

Judgements vs affective evaluations of counterfactual outcomes

Counterfactual thoughts are imagined alternatives to past events and outcomes. Such thoughts may address possible consequences and effects of a counterfactual turn of events, and also an affective evaluation of that simulated outcome. Previous research has shown that estimates of counterfactual consequences are exaggerated (Teigen, Kanten, & Terum, 2011). The present research compared both consequence estimates and affective evaluations of factual and counterfactual outcomes. Consistent with previous findings, participants exaggerated consequence estimates, but affective evaluations indicated an opposite effect: Factual events were evaluated as more emotionally impressive than comparable counterfactual outcomes, for both negative (Experiment 1) and positive outcomes (Experiment 2). We discuss these apparently contradictory findings within the framework of construal level theory and suggest that both findings are compatible with an abstract, high-level account of counterfactual thinking.     

Young children's understanding of multiple object identity: appearance, pretense and function

Evidence from theory-of-mind tasks suggests that young children have substantial difficulty thinking about multiple object identity and multiple versions of reality. On the other hand, evidence from children's understanding of pretense indicates that children have little trouble understanding dual object identity and counterfactual scenarios that are involved in pretend play. Two studies reported here show that this competence is not limited to pretend play. Three-year-olds also understand the dual identity involved in unusual functional use (X is being used as Y), even though they have difficulty understanding deceptive appearance (X looks like Y). We suggest that children are able to distinguish extrinsic object properties from intrinsic ones (function vs. category-membership) better than they can distinguish superficial object properties from deep ones (appearance vs. category-membership).     

The Relation Between Factual and Counterfactual Conditionals

What is the relation between factual conditionals: If A happened then B happened, and counterfactual conditionals: If A had happened then B would have happened? Some theorists propose quite different semantics for the two. In contrast, the theory of mental models and its computer implementation interrelates them. It postulates that both can have a priori truth values, and that the semantic bases of both are possibilities: states that are possible for factual conditionals, and that were once possible but that did not happen for counterfactual conditionals. Two experiments supported these relations. Experiment 1 showed that, like factual conditionals, certain counterfactuals are true a priori, and others are false a priori. Experiment 2 replicated this result and showed that participants selected appropriate paraphrases, referring, respectively, to real and to counterfactual possibilities, for the two sorts of conditional. These results are contrary to alternative accounts of conditionals.     

On the psychology of ‘if only’: Regret and the comparison between factual and counterfactual outcomes

People experience regret when they realize that they would have been better off had they decided differently. Hence, a central element in regret is the comparability of a decision outcome with the outcomes forgone. Up to now, however, the comparison process that is so essential to the experience of regret has not been the subject of psychological research. In this article, we tune in on the comparison dependency of regret. We argue that factors that reduce the tendency to compare attenuate regret, and demonstrate that uncertainty about counterfactual outcomes (Experiment 1), and incomparability of counterfactual and factual outcomes (Experiments 2 and 3) produce such effects.     

Models of Deduction*

In standard model theory, deductions are not the things one models. But in general proof theory, in particular in categorial proof theory, one finds models of deductions, and the purpose here is to motivate a simple example of such models. This will be a model of deductions performed within an abstract context, where we do not have any particular logical constant, but something underlying all logical constants. In this context, deductions are represented by arrows in categories involved in a general adjoint situation. To motivate the notion of adjointness, one of the central notions of category theory, and of mathematics in general, it is first considered how some features of it occur in set-theoretical axioms and in the axioms of the lambda calculus. Next, it is explained how this notion arises in the context of deduction, where it characterizes logical constants. It is shown also how the categorial point of view suggests an analysis of propositional identity. The problem of propositional identity, i.e., the problem of identity of meaning for propositions, is no doubt a philosophical problem, but the spirit of the analysis proposed here will be rather mathematical. Finally, it is considered whether models of deductions can pretend to be a semantics. This question, which as so many questions having to do with meaning brings us to that wall that blocked linguists and philosophers during the whole of the twentieth century, is merely posed. At the very end, there is the example of a geometrical model of adjunction. Without pretending that it is a semantics, it is hoped that this model may prove illuminating and useful. *Since the text of this talk was written in 1999, the author has published several papers about related matters (see ‘Identity of proofs based on normalization and generality’, The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 9 (2003), 477–503, corrected version available at: http://arXiv.org/math.LO/0208094; other titles are available in the same archive).     

反事实思维与内疚和羞耻的关系——以大学生和青少年罪犯为例

运用自我报告法从反事实思维的角度验证内疚与羞耻差异的"自我和行为"假设,探讨大学生和青少年罪犯在反事实思维与内疚和羞耻关系方面的特点。结果表明:1)研究结果不支持Lewis提出的内疚与羞耻差异的"自我和行为"假设,甚至与该假设相反;2)在真实的情境中,大学生和青少年罪犯内疚感和羞耻感与反事实思维的特点具有一致性。     

Children's counterfactual inferences about long and short causal chains

Recent findings on counterfactual reasoning in children have led to the claim that children's developing capacities in the domain of ‘theory of mind’ might reflect the emergence of the ability to engage in counterfactual thinking over the preschool period (e.g. Riggs, Peterson, Robinson & Mitchell, 1998 ). In the study reported here, groups of 3- and 4-year old children were presented with stories describing causal chains of several events, and asked counterfactual thinking tasks involving changes to different points in the chain. The ability to draw successful counterfactual inferences depended strongly on the inferential length of the problem, and the age of the children; while 3-year-olds performed above chance on short inference counterfactuals, they performed below chance on problems involving longer inference chains. Four-year-old children were above chance on all problems. Moreover, it was found that while success on longer chain inference problems was significantly correlated with the ability to pass tests of standard false belief, there was no such relationship for short inference problems, which were significantly easier than false belief problems. These results are discussed in terms of the developmental relationships between causal knowledge, counterfactual thinking and calculating the contents of mental states.     

Eye movements reveal rapid concurrent access to factual and counterfactual interpretations of the world

Imagining a counterfactual world using conditionals (e.g., If Joanne had remembered her umbrella . . .) is common in everyday language. However, such utterances are likely to involve fairly complex reasoning processes to represent both the explicit hypothetical conjecture and its implied factual meaning. Online research into these mechanisms has so far been limited. The present paper describes two eye movement studies that investigated the time-course with which comprehenders can set up and access factual inferences based on a realistic counterfactual context. Adult participants were eye-tracked while they read short narratives, in which a context sentence set up a counterfactual world (If . . . then . . .), and a subsequent critical sentence described an event that was either consistent or inconsistent with the implied factual world. A factual consistent condition (Because . . . then . . .) was included as a baseline of normal contextual integration. Results showed that within a counterfactual scenario, readers quickly inferred the implied factual meaning of the discourse. However, initial processing of the critical word led to clear, but distinct, anomaly detection responses for both contextually inconsistent and consistent conditions. These results provide evidence that readers can rapidly make a factual inference from a preceding counterfactual context, despite maintaining access to both counterfactual and factual interpretations of events.     

The affective consequences of expected and unexpected outcomes

How do people feel about unexpected positive and negative outcomes? Decision affect theory (DAT) proposes that people feel displeasure when their outcomes fall short of the counterfactual alternative and elated when their outcomes exceed the counterfactual alternative. Because disconfirmed expectations provide a counterfactual alternative, DAT predicts that bad outcomes feel worse when unexpected than when expected, yet good outcomes feel better when unexpected than when expected. Consistency theories propose that people experience displeasure when their expectations are disconfirmed because the disconfirmation suggests an inability to predict. According to consistency theories, both good and bad outcomes feel worse when unexpected than when expected. These two theoretical approaches were tested in three studies. The results consistently support DAT     

Counterfactual reasoning and the problem of selecting antecedent scenarios

A recent group of social scientists have argued that counterfactual questions play an essential role in their disciplines, and that it is possible to have rigorous methods to investigate them. Unfortunately, there has been little (if any) interaction between these social scientists and the philosophers who have long held that rigorous counterfactual reasoning is possible. In this paper, I hope to encourage some fresh thinking on both sides by creating new connections between them. I describe what I term “problem of selecting antecedent scenarios,” and show that this is an essential challenge in real-life counterfactual reasoning. Then, I demonstrate that the major extant theories of counterfactuals (especially the Lewis/Stalnaker theory and Igal Kvart’s rival account) are unable to solve this problem. I show that there are instances of real-life counterfactual reasoning in the social sciences that are counterexamples to both of these accounts. And finally, I develop a new theory of how to select antecedent scenarios that overcomes these difficulties, and so would be part of a more adequate theory of counterfactuals (and counterfactual reasoning).     

Mechanistic explanation at the limit

Resurgent interest in both mechanistic and counterfactual theories of explanation has led to a fair amount of discussion regarding the relative merits of these two approaches. James Woodward is currently the pre-eminent counterfactual theorist, and he criticizes the mechanists on the following grounds: Unless mechanists about explanation invoke counterfactuals, they cannot make sense of claims about causal interactions between mechanism parts or of causal explanations put forward absent knowledge of productive mechanisms. He claims that these shortfalls can be offset if mechanists will just borrow key tenets of his counterfactual theory of causal claims. What mechanists must bear in mind, however, is that by pursuing this course they risk both the assimilation of the mechanistic theories of explanation into Woodward’s own favored counterfactual theory, and they risk the marginalization of mechanistic explanations to a proper subset of all explanations. An outcome more favorable to mechanists might be had by pursuing an actualist-mechanist theory of the contents of causal claims. While it may not seem obvious at first blush that such an approach is workable, even in principle, recent empirical research into causal perception, causal belief, and mechanical reasoning provides some grounds for optimism.