Functional analysis of counterfactual thinking: developmental path and applications

Mental simulation is a common and instinctive aspect of the human mind. Counterfactual thinking involves mentally representing how the world would have been now if things had been different. Numerous studies have been conducted on how people imagine other outcomes of previous events. Counterfactual thinking promotes learning, is essential for individuals to create meaning in their daily lives and plays an important role in a vast range of processes, from decision-making to emotion and performance. It is still unclear at what age children can produce counterfactuals like those of adults, and there were no studies investigating the content and frequency of adults’ counterfactuals about daily events, comparing CFT with other types of thoughts. The main aims of this study are: 1) to study the age at which children can produce valid CFT similar to adults; 2) to analyze the cognitive mechanisms underlying the production of CFT, 3) to identify features in contrast to other forms of thinking like prefactual (“Things in the future might turn out differently if only…”) and causal thinking ““Things turned out this way because…”). Participants performed a task or reflected on a daily event and then completed a sentence (e.g., "things would have been better for me if...") with an antecedent (adaptation of the experimental paradigm of Ferrante et al. 2013). Moreover, participants completed questionnaires about their performance or the personal situation they were experiencing, thoughts, moods, behaviors, intentions, and personal characteristics. We coded counterfactual, prefactual, and causal thoughts generated for controllability (Ferrante et al, 2013) and locus (Roese and Epstude, 2017). In daily life events, it was not always possible to determine if the thoughts produced were controllable or not. We used a new similar, but different classification with three levels: BEHAVIOR, STATE, and SITUATION. Studies showed that children aged 8-13 produce counterfactuals about an event that had happened to them, despite not achieving an adult-level ability and focusing on different content antecedents than adults. In daily life, the proportion of thoughts in macro-categories is shaped by the question proposed, and we found differences between counterfactual and causal thinking. Finally, causal thoughts and counterfactuals seem to differ with regard to other characteristics, not for controllability. The results provide an original contribution to the study of the content of children's and adults' counterfactuals. Counterfactuals are an autonomous form of thinking that seems to explain an event by dwelling on the causes that triggered it and could prevent it next time, and not necessarily on the more controllable causes.