Counterfactual thought in reasoning and performance

Counterfactual thoughts mutate reality to imagine how things might have been different than they actually are. These types of thoughts are more frequent when the antecedent is unusual or the outcome is temporally or numerically close. Counterfactuals have functional benefits for causal reasoning, motivation, intentions, and behavior change. However, they can also bias or hinder these same phenomena under certain conditions. In this article, we...