On An Effect Produced By Counterfactual Reasoning In Different Story Situations On Emotion

Counterfactual thinking, as a characteristic of human consciousness, refers to mental simulations of possible assumption that often occur in response to negative life-events prompting reflection about better possible outcomes. Counterfactual thinking and emotion are related and different counterfactual thinking resulting in the same outcome triggers different emotions. Counterfactual assumption is evoked by experienced facts of reality that People live through some events and consequence of own behaviors and of external circumstance and are compared to these alternatives. Based on the kind of comparison, people feel better or worse about past events. The former researchers think little about the effects of counterfactual thinking from different story situations.The research consists of two experiments. In experiment 1, it creates four different versions of the sutra traffic story and participants are randomly assigned to one of four stories. After finishing reading, the experimenters interview the subjects and then score emotion of character's family and friends in the stories. In experiment 2, four different versions of the equity capital stories are created and participants are assigned to all four the equity capital story. After finishing reading, the experimenters interview the subjects and then score character's emotion of in the stories and character's intensity. Based on the two experiments, we draw some conclusions as follows:1. Consistent model of regret and norm theory can explain preferably an effect from...