The Effect Of Categorical Cut-off Points On High School Student’s Counterfactual Thinking And Emotion

Counterfactual thinking is a sort of assumptive conceptual work based on the possibility of people’s disavowal to the happened things emotionally. It’s one of the crucial features of human consciousness and one common psychological phenomenon in people’s daily life, imposing a profound influence on lots of mental activities. Most existing studies on counterfactual thinking were built on the western cultural background. The past few years witnessed this field drawing more and more attention from Chinese researchers. Currently, there are few studies on counterfactual thinking in China, and comparatively speaking, they are more scatted than those at abroad. This thesis starts with the introduction of the concept of counterfactual thinking, types, functions and the influential factors of it, offering relative information in detail. Then, this thesis analyzes the deficiencies of the previous studies, based on which studies on counterfactual thinking are extended further in this paper.In this study, 240 high school students from two ordinary secondary schools in Jiangxi province are selected as the research objects. With the applying of scenario simulation technique, the thesis studies the subtle influences brought by different grade boundaries on these students’ counterfactual thinking and their emotion. This study includes two sub studies, the first of which investigates the characteristics of these students’ counterfactual thinking and the emotional changes when there is only one categorical cut-off point. The second sub study probes the rules of these students’ counterfactual thinking and the emotional changes when there are many grade demarcation points.Key findings are listed as follow:(1) In the case of one categorical cut-off point, success induced more upward counterfactual thinking; Failure induced more downward counterfactual thinking;(2)In the case of one categorical cut-off point, consequence(success or failure) was found to have significant effect on counterfactual thinking and emotional. Proximity(close to or far away from) was also found to have significant effect on counterfactual thinking. Participants in condition of close to success showed more downward counterfactual thinking than those away from success, those in condition of close to failure reported more upward counterfactual thinking than those away from failure. Proximity also had significant effects on positive emotions, participants in condition of close to success reported higher level of positive emotion than those in condition of away from success;(3)There are two categorical cut-off points, in the same grade, the cut-off point just passed individuals produce more downward counterfactual thinking, approaching a higher level cut-off point of the individuals to produce more upward counterfactual thinking;(4)When there are two categorical cut-off points, on the whole, individuals with better results reported higher level of positive emotion. Individuals who failed to reach a lower cut-off point showed no significant difference in negative emotion with those who failed to achieve a higher cut-off point.In the same categorical cut-off point, the individual just reached the categorical cut-off point than close to a higher level categorical cut-off point individual to produce more upward counterfactual thinking.The results prove that individuals in the former condition experienced higher level positive emotion than those in the later condition even they achieved better performance;(5)Type of counterfactual thinking can effectively predict emotions, generate upward counterfactual thinking participants have more positive emotions, generate upward counterfactual thinking participants have more negative emotional experience;...