The importance of contextual variables when judging fairness: An examination of counterfactual thoughts and fairness theory

This research empirically examines the underlying mechanisms of fairness theory (  and ), namely counterfactual thought processes. Study 1 used a policy-capturing design to examine the relative importance of contextual variables in predicting counterfactual thoughts and fairness perceptions. Study 2 utilized a between-subjects design and asked participants to generate their own counterfactuals in response to an unfortunate event. Results of both studies showed that fairness perceptions are influenced by contextual variables (i.e., outcome severity, target knowledge and expertise, sin of commission vs. omission) and counterfactual thinking. Counterfactual thoughts partially mediated the effects of contextual variables and fairness perceptions in Study 1. Exploratory analyses from Study 3 revealed that the measurement of counterfactual thoughts (frequency vs. strength) may capture different underlying constructs. Implications are discussed.     

If only I had taken my usual route… : Age-related differences in counter-factual thinking

ABSTRACT

Previous research suggests that young adults can shift between rational and experiential modes of thinking when forming social judgments. The present study examines whether older adults demonstrate this flexibility in thinking. Young and older adults completed an If-only task adapted from Epstein, Lipson, and Huh's (1992 Epstein, S., Lipson, A. and Huh, E. 1992. Irrational reactions to negative outcomes: Evidence for two conceptual systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62: 328–339. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.62.2.328[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 328) examination of individuals' ability to adopt rational or experiential modes of thought while making a judgment about characters who experience a negative event that could have been avoided. Consistent with our expectations for their judgments of the characters, young adults shifted between experiential and rational modes of thought when instructed to do so. Conversely, regardless of the mode of thought being used or the order with which they adopted the different modes of thought (i.e., shifting from experiential to rational in Study 1 and from rational to experiential in Study 2), older adults consistently offered judgments and justifications that reflected a preference for experiential-based thought.     

Dispositional factors predicting Chinese students’ critical thinking performance

Dispositional factors have been suggested to affect individuals’ critical thinking performance. The relative and combined effects of thinking dispositions and cognitive ability on the critical thinking performance of a group of 137 Chinese undergraduates were examined. Participants were administered the Need for Cognition Scale, Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness Subscales of the NEO Five Factor Inventory as well as the Concern for Truth Scale. Cognitive ability and critical thinking performance were respectively estimated with the WAIS-III Verbal Comprehension Index and the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment Using Everyday Situations. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that only the disposition of concern for truth accounted for unique additional variance in critical thinking beyond that explained by cognitive ability. The findings are discussed in the light of cultural factors affecting critical thinking in the Chinese context.     

Coping with disappointing outcomes: Retroactive pessimism and motivated inhibition of counterfactuals

Having failed to achieve a desired goal, people may use retroactive pessimism as a defense mechanism, concluding that chances of success were not too good to begin with. To make this judgment, one must block counterfactual alternatives suggesting that success was, in fact, quite likely. Facing a bitter disappointment, the perceiver is highly motivated to inhibit upward counterfactuals, thus increasing the perceived inevitability of failure and finding solace in the acceptance of inescapable fate. Two experiments explored the hypothesized link between counterfactuals inhibition and retroactive pessimism. In the first experiment, it was found that participants experiencing grave disappointment, following a near miss, judged their chances of achieving their goal less favorably, compared to participants who had missed their goal by far. An analysis on participants’ counterfactual judgments suggested that this effect was mediated by participants’ perceptions of counterfactual events. The second experiment demonstrated that retroactive pessimism and counterfactual inhibition seem to be unique to situations in which the negative outcome resulted from uncontrollable rather than controllable events, thus corroborating the functional characterization of counterfactual thinking as well as the link between retroactive pessimism and disappointment.     

Do university students’ thinking styles matter in their preferred teaching approaches?

This study pioneered the research on the role of university students’ thinking styles in their preferred teaching approaches. Three hundred and forty-eight (111 male and 237 female) students from a large comprehensive university in Beijing, P.R. China, responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory (Revised) and the Preferred Teaching Approach Inventory. Results indicated that regardless of age, gender, university class level, and academic discipline, students with different thinking styles had significantly different preferences for particular teaching approaches. It was contended that both conceptual change and information transmission are necessary for effective teaching. Theoretically, the study contributed to the styles literature in general and to the literature on the relationships between styles and approaches of teaching and learning in particular. Practical implications of the present findings are discussed in the context of students’ teaching evaluations, teachers’ teaching, and university administrators’ personnel management.     

The psychology and philosophy of luck

There has been a great deal of interest in the concept of luck in the recent psychological and philosophical literature. In philosophy, this interest has tended to focus not upon luck simpliciter but rather upon the role that luck plays in ethical and epistemological debates concerning (respectively) moral and epistemic luck. In psychology, in contrast, a number of studies have explicitly examined our everyday conceptions of luck and the manner in which these conceptions influence our lives. This article surveys both the recent psychological and philosophical literature on this topic and argues that (to different degrees) the work of both disciplines in this area has been hampered by a failure to be clearer about what luck involves. Accordingly, this article offers a specification of what is core to the notion of luck and highlights how this analysis can aid further research in this area by both psychologists and philosophers.     

Fantasy proneness and counterfactual thinking

Counterfactual thinking (CFT; mentally simulating alternatives to reality) is central to learning and motivation. Two studies explored the relationship between CFT and fantasy proneness, a personality trait typified by excessive fantasies hard to distinguish from reality. In study1, participants completed a fictional diary entry which was used to measure spontaneous CFT and the Creative Experiences Questionnaire measure of fantasy proneness. Fantasy proneness was significantly correlated with the generation of counterfactual thoughts. Both CFT and fantasy proneness have been independently associated with low mood and study2 included a measure of negative emotional state (the Depression, Anxiety and Stress scale) in addition to the CEQ and CFT. Fantasy proneness and negative emotion both predicted CFT, but no interaction between them was observed. The results suggest that individuals high in fantasy proneness have a general tendency to think counterfactually.     

When the alternative would have been better: Counterfactual reasoning and the emergence of regret

Counterfactual reasoning about how events could have turned out better is associated with the feeling of regret. However, developmental studies show a discrepancy between the onset of counterfactual reasoning (at 3 years) and the feeling of regret (at 6 years). In four experiments we explored possible reasons. Experiment 1 (3- to 6-year-old children) and Experiment 2 (adult control) show that even when regret is assessed more directly than in previous studies (e.g., Amsel & Smalley, 2000) only adults but not children regret their decision. Experiment 3 (3- to 14-year-old children) suggests that double-questioning—asking children how happy they are with what they got before and after they had seen what they could have got—creates false positive indications of regret in the youngest children and that—when controlling for false positives—regret is not evident before 9 years. However, children before this age make a difference between attractive (three candies) and less attractive (one candy) items (Experiment 4; 6- to 8-year-old children). Taken together, this suggests that before 9 years of age children base their judgements solely on what they got without taking into account what they could have got.     

An investigation into the online processing of counterfactual and indicative conditionals

The ability to represent conditional information is central to human cognition. In two self-paced reading experiments we investigated how readers process counterfactual conditionals (e.g., If Darren had been athletic, he could probably have played on the rugby team) and indicative conditionals (e.g., If Darren is athletic, he probably plays on the rugby team). In Experiment 1 we focused on how readers process counterfactual conditional sentences. We found that processing of the antecedent of counterfactual conditionals was rapidly constrained by prior context (i.e., knowing whether Darren was or was not athletic). A reading-time penalty was observed for the critical region of text comprising the last word of the antecedent and the first word of the consequent when the information in the antecedent did not fit with prior context. In Experiment 2 we contrasted counterfactual conditionals with indicative conditionals. For counterfactual conditionals we found the same effect on the critical region as we found in Experiment 1. In contrast, however, we found no evidence that processing of the antecedent of indicative conditionals was constrained by prior context. For indicative conditionals (but not for counterfactual conditionals), the results we report are consistent with the suppositional account of conditionals. We propose that current theories of conditionals need to be able to account for online processing differences between indicative and counterfactual conditionals.