Abstract
Although past theory and research have suggested that counterfactual thoughts (representations of alternatives to past outcomes) weaken the hindsight bias (after-the-fact exaggeration of an outcome's a priori likelihood), the present research shows the opposite (i.e., positive) relation. Experiment 1 demonstrated that counterfactual thinking can heighten the hindsight bias, and that the effect of counterfactuals on causal inferences can account for this relation. Experiment 2 indicated that postoutcome elaboration of the causal linkage between an antecedent and outcome is essential for the hindsight bias, and that this bias may be redefined to include postoutcome certainty regarding "what should have been" as well as what was. Experiment 3 provided more direct evidence that causal inferences mediate the facilitative effect of counterfactual thinking on the hindsight bias.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 197-227 |
| Number of pages | 31 |
| Journal | Journal of Experimental Social Psychology |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 1996 |
Funding
This research was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship awarded to Neal Roese and a research grant awarded to James Olson, both from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We thank Dave Hamilton, Dale Miller, Mike Ross, Richard Sorrentino, Yaacov Trope, and two anonymous reviewers for providing valuable comments on various versions of the manuscript. We are also grateful to Eileen da Pena for her assistance in running the first experiment. Correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed to Neal Roese, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-2710. e-mail: roese=nwu.edu. Counterfactual research news is posted at the web site, http://www.psych.nwu. edu/people/roese.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Sociology and Political Science