The Effect Of The Counterfactual Thinking On Behavior Intentions In Different Event Type

The counterfactual thinking refers to the mental simulation of the reality.It means that making a comparison of the result that already had and the result that could have had,the individuals' thinking activity of denying past events and meanwhile generating a possible hypothesis.According to different ways of classification,the counterfactual thinking can be classified as upward and downward counterfactual thinking;additive?subtractive and substitutional counterfactual thinking;would ? could and should counterfatual thinking.The counterfactual thinking has two kinds of functions: emotional and preparatory function.Behavior intention is instructions that people give themselves to behave in a particular way.Counterfactual thinking facilitates behavior intentions,and facilitates behavior change via content-specific pathway.The pathway involved three steps:(1)a problem activates counterfactual thinking,(2)counterfactual thinking activates a behavior intention,and(3)the behavior intention evokes the corresponding behavior.In the content-specific pathway,upward counterfactual thinking is more useful than downward counterfactual thinking for the behavioral regulation.Because fot the upward counterfactual thinking,the focus is on the new behavior and new strategy.The additive counterfactual thinking usually has more creativity and includes more consideration of new options,whereas the subtractive counterfactual thinking is restricted by the fact that already had happened.The event type includes daily hassles and traumatic life events.At present,many studies which are about the effect of the counterfactual thinking on behavior intention mostly pay attention to daily hassles.Little study is about traumatic life events.The content of the counterfactual thinkingincludes abstract and concrete information.Some studies found that the change of the description of the event can influence the counterfactual thinking.Compared to the abstract description,the concrete description can induce more upward counterfactual thinking.The relationship between the counterfactual thinking and the behavior intention can be influenced by the content of the counterfactual thinking.Some studies use two kinds of content,according to the change of the cognition level,one kind is the specific/concrete content of the counterfactual thinking,the other kind is the abstract content of the counterfactual thinking.The results showed that for the daily hassles,compared to the abstract content,the concrete content which including the way to avoid negative result can facilitate behavior intention better.The study used the sequential priming paradigm to investigate the effect of the counterfactual thinking on the behavior intention and the effect of the content of the counterfactual thinking on the relationship between the counterfactual and the behavior intention.The study focused on two main questions,one was that whether the counterfactual thinking can facilitate behavior intention for the daily hassles and the traumatic life events,the other was that whether different kinds of content of the counterfactual thinking(abstract/concrete)can influence the relationship between the counterfactual thinking and the behavior intention,and whether the influence was different in different types of the event.Preliminary experiment had proved that individuals generate more upward and addictive counterfactual thinking spontaneously and this kind of the counterfactual thinking had positive effect on the subsequent behavior.And ten daily hassles and ten traumatic life events were selected for subsequent experiments.Study 1 was a 2(event type: daily hassles/traumatic life events)×2(prime: counterfactual/factual thinking)two factor mixed experimental design,of which the event type was within-subject factor and the prime was between-subject factor.The results showed that main effect of the event type wasn't significant and the interaction effect wasn't significant,which indicated that the counterfactual thinking can facilitate behavior intention in both kinds of the event type and there wasn't difference between them.To investigate the role of the content of the counterfactual thinking for the relationship between the counterfactual thinking and the behavior intention,study 2 was done.Study 2 was a 2(event type: daily hassles/traumatic life events)×2(prime: counterfactual /factual thinking)×2(the content of the counterfactual thinking: abstract / concrete)three factor within-subject experimental design.The hypothesis of the study was that for the daily hassles and the traumatic life events,compared to the abstract content of the counterfactual thinking,when the content of the counterfactual thinking was concrete,the counterfactual could facilitate behavior intention.Repeated-measures ANOVA showed that the main effect of the event type wasn't significant,the main effect of the prime was significant,the main effect of the content of the counterfactual thinking was significant,the interaction effect of the event type and the prime wasn't significant,the interaction effect of the event type and the content of the counterfactual thinking wasn't significant,and the interaction effect of the prime and the content of the counterfactual thinking was significant.The simple effect analysis showed that when the content of the counterfactual thinking was concrete,the counterfactual thinking produced faster behavior intention judgments relative to the factual thinking.When the content of the counterfactual thinking was abstract,the counterfactual thinking did not facilitate behavior intention relative to the factual thinking.The interaction effect of the event type and the prime and the content of the counterfactual thinking wasn't significant.Overall,it is concluded that:(1)The counterfactual thinking could facilitate behavior intention for the daily hassles and the traumatic life events,and the facilitating effect had no significant difference.(2)When the content of the counterfactual thinking was concrete,the counterfactual thinking produced faster behavior intention judgments relative to the factual thinking.When the content of the counterfactual thinking is abstract,the counterfactual thinking did not facilitate behavior intention relative to the factual thinking.