Counterfactual Thinking

We feel less sympathy for a victim of a robbery that failed to follow a normal route to work, left work later or earlier than normal.

We also think if  our daughter had studied harder or attended class more often she could have scored higher grades.

Or if the striker in our football team had put more effort, we could have scored more goals.

Or if the our political leaders had proposed some better policies, our livelihood could have been better.

These kind of thoughts occur in our mind all the time.

Counterfactual thinking is a cognitive process in which individuals imagine alternative outcomes or scenarios that might have occurred if they had made different choices or if events had unfolded differently in the past. 

It involves mentally "playing out" different scenarios to explore how changing one's actions or circumstances might have led to different results. 

Counterfactual thinking can be a natural way to reflect on past experiences and learn from them, but it can also lead to feelings of regret or "what-if" speculation. 

It's a common phenomenon in human decision-making and can have both positive and negative effects on our emotions and behavior.

Because our emotional responses differ depending on how easy it is to mentally undo the circumstances that go contrary to our expectations.

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