Counterfactual reasoning and moral emotion attribution

Studies in the happy victimizer paradigm have shown that preschool children attribute positive emotions to a norm violator whereas older elementary-school children tend to attribute negative emotions. The current research explored the possibility that children's counterfactual reasoning ability (i.e., their capacity to imagine alternatives to reality) can explain this age difference in moral emotion attribution. In Study 1, 100 4- and 8-year-old children attributed significantly more negative emotions to victimizers in a counterfactual-prime condition, in which an alternative course of action was presented before the emotion attribution, than in a no-prime condition, where no counterfactual prompt was given. Counterfactual reasoning ability significantly predicted negative emotion attribution in the no-prime condition. In Study 2, the counterfactual reasoning of 143 4- and 8-year-old children significantly predicted negative emotion attribution to the victimizer. When controlling for counterfactual reasoning, focusing on the victim of a violation did not affect emotion attribution to the violator.     

Gender role orientation,thinking style preference and facets of adult paranormality: A mediation analysis

This study examines the extent to which masculine and feminine gender role orientations predict self-reported anomalous experiences, belief, ability and fear once relevant correlates including biological sex are controlled for. The extent to which rational versus intuitive thinking style preference mediates these relationships is also examined. Path analysis (n = 332) found heightened femininity directly predicts stronger intuitive preference plus more anomalous experiences, belief and fear with, additionally, intuitive preference mediating several gender role-paranormality relationships. By comparison, heightened masculinity directly predicts both thinking styles plus lower anomalous fear. The latter relationship is also shaped by the nature of mediators with (a) more anomalous experiences and belief associated with more anomalous fear and (b) either heightened rationality else more anomalous ability linked to, conversely, less anomalous fear. The extent to which findings support a gender (or social) role account of adult paranormality, together with methodological limitations and ideas for future research, is discussed.     

Emotional intensity in episodic autobiographical memory and counterfactual thinking

Episodic counterfactual thoughts—imagined alternative ways in which personal past events might have occurred—are frequently accompanied by intense emotions. Here, participants recollected positive and negative autobiographical memories and then generated better and worse episodic counterfactual events from those memories. Our results suggest that the projected emotional intensity during the simulated remembered/imagined event is significantly higher than but typically positively related to the emotional intensity while remembering/imagining the event. Furthermore, repeatedly simulating counterfactual events heightened the emotional intensity felt while simulating the counterfactual event. Finally, for both the emotional intensity accompanying the experience of remembering/imagining and the projected emotional intensity during the simulated remembered/imagined event, the emotional intensity of negative memories was greater than the emotional intensity of upward counterfactuals generated from them but lower than the emotional intensity of downward counterfactuals generated from them. These findings are discussed in relation to clinical work and functional theories of counterfactual thinking.     

Counterfactual thinking, persistence, and performance: A test of the Reflection and Evaluation Model

The present research extends previous functional accounts of counterfactual thinking by incorporating the notion of reflective and evaluative processing. Participants generated counterfactuals about their anagram performance, after which their persistence and performance on a second set of anagrams was measured. Evaluative processing of upward counterfactuals elicited a larger increase in persistence and better performance than did reflective processing of upward counterfactuals, whereas reflective processing of downward counterfactuals elicited a larger increase in persistence and better performance than did evaluative processing of downward counterfactuals. Moreover, path analyses indicated that whereas the relationship between counterfactual thinking and persistence was accounted for by emotional responses following upward and downward counterfactual generation, the relationship between counterfactual thinking and performance was accounted for by enhanced persistence following reflective processing of downward counterfactuals, but was accounted for by both enhanced persistence and strategic thinking following evaluative processing of upward counterfactuals.     

Last night I had the strangest dream: Varieties of rational thought processes in dream reports

From the neurophysiological perspective, thinking in dreaming and the quality of dream thought have been considered hallucinatory, bizarre, illogical, improbable, or even impossible. This empirical phenomenological research concentrates on testing whether dream thought can be defined as rational in the sense of an intervening mental process between sensory perception and the creation of meaning, leading to a conclusion or to taking action. From 10 individual dream journals of male participants aged 22–59 years and female participants aged 25–49 years, we delimited four dreams per journal and randomly selected five thought units from each dream for scoring. The units provided a base for testing a hypothesis that the thought processes of dream construction are rational. The results support the hypothesis and demonstrate that eight fundamental rational thought processes can be applied to the dreaming process.     

Counterfactual thinking facilitates behavioral intentions

People often ponder what might have been, and these counterfactual inferences have been linked to behavior regulation. Counterfactuals may enhance performance by either a content-specific pathway (via shift in behavioral intentions) and/or a content-neutral pathway (via mindsets or motivation). Three experiments provided new specification of the content-specific pathway. A sequential priming paradigm revealed that counterfactual judgments facilitated RTs to complete behavioral intention judgments relative to control judgments and to a no-judgment baseline (Experiment 1). This facilitation effect was found only for intention judgments that matched the information content of the counterfactual (Experiment 2) and only for intention judgments as opposed to a different judgment that nevertheless focused on the same information content (Experiment 3). These findings clarify the content-specific pathway by which counterfactuals influence behavior.     

Preschool Pretend Play Behaviors and Early Adolescent Creativity

Individual differences in creativity across the lifespan have been identified, but little research has focused on the development of creativity during early adolescence. This project examined individual differences on two measures of creativity in early adolescence as well as the predictability of adolescent creativity from pretend play behaviors during the preschool years. Realistic role‐play behavior was assessed at age 5 for 127 children who later completed two creative thinking tasks (TCT‐DP and the Alternative Uses Measure) when the children were 10–15 years of age. Realistic role‐play when the children were age 5 significantly predicted their scores during early adolescence on the Alternative Uses Measure but not the TCT‐DP. Significant sex differences were found for amount of time engaged in realistic role‐play at age 5 and performance on the TCT‐DP, with girls engaging in more role‐play at age 5 and scoring higher on the TCT‐DP during early adolescence than boys. No sex differences were observed for the Alternative Uses Measure. These results suggest that preschool role‐play behaviors represent early creativity and are tapping aspects of creativity development that are manifested in early adolescence.     

Thinking styles, self-esteem, and socio-economic status

The present study aimed at examining the nature of thinking styles. Six hundred and ninety-four students (ages ranging from 17–45) from the University of Hong Kong participated in the study. The participants responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory and the Self-Esteem Inventory (Adult Form) and provided a range of socio-economic status (SES) indicators. It was found that when age was controlled, thinking styles and self-esteem overlap. Furthermore, regardless of age, those students who reported using thinking styles that are creativity-generating and more complex, and those who reported higher self-esteem tend to be students from higher SES families. Discussion was made in relation to these findings' practical implications for teachers.     

Memory and Counterfactual Simulations for Past Wrongdoings Foster Moral Learning and Improvement

In four studies, we investigated the role of remembering, reflecting on, and mutating personal past moral transgressions to learn from those moral mistakes and to form intentions for moral improvement. Participants reported having ruminated on their past wrongdoings, particularly their more severe transgressions, and they reported having frequently thought about morally better ways in which they could have acted instead (i.e., morally upward counterfactuals; Studies 1–3). The more that participants reported having mentally simulated morally better ways in which they could have acted, the stronger their intentions were to improve in the future (Studies 2 and 3). Implementing an experimental manipulation, we then found that making accessible a morally upward counterfactual after committing a moral transgression strengthened reported intentions for moral improvement—relative to resimulating the remembered event and considering morally worse ways in which they could have acted instead (Study 4). We discuss the implications of these results for competing theoretical views on the relationship between memory and morality and for functional theories of counterfactual thinking.