Next
Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 07 Jun 2013

Taken: 05 Jan 2013

7 favorites     12 comments    184 visits

See also...

Keywords

Excerpt •
Paradox of Choice •
Author •
Barry Schwartz •
Professor •
Social theory & social action •
Wall •
Photographed at •
Downtown •
MI •
East Lansing •
Michigan •

Authorizations, license

Visible by: Everyone
All rights reserved
184 visits

Counterfactual thinking

Counterfactual thinking
HWW -- Best wishes

Ulrich John, trester88, Stephan Fey, Wierd Folkersma and 3 other people have particularly liked this photo

12 comments - The latest ones
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
The power of the human imagination enables people to think about states of affairs that don’t exist. When confronted with a choice between a job that offers the possibility of rapid advancement and a job that offers congenial workmates, I can easily imagine finding a job that has both. This ability to conjure up ideal scenarios provided a never-ending supply of raw material for experiencing regret…

Thinking about the world as it isn’t, but might be or might have been is called “Counterfactual thinking.’ ……

We couldn’t make it through the day without counterfactual thinking. Without the ability to imagine a world that is different from our actual world and then to act to bring it imagined world into being, we never would have survived as a species, much less advanced through the millions of stages of speculation and trial and error that is the history of human progress. But the downside of counterfactual thinking is that it fuels regret, both post-decision regret and anticipated regret.

Psychologist who have studied counterfactual thinking extensively find that most individuals do not often engage in this process spontaneously. We don’t sit around, sitting our morning coffee, and ask ourselves what our lives would have been like if we’d been born in South Africa rather than the U.S., or if the earth’s orbit had been just a few thousand miles closer to the sun. Instead, counterfactual thinking is usually triggered by the occurrence of something unpleasant, something that itself produces a negative emotion. Counterfactual thoughts are generated in response to experiences such as poor exam grades, trouble in romantic relationships, and the illness or death of loved ones. And when the counterfactual thoughts being to occur, they trigger more negative emotions, like regret, which in turn trigger more counterfactual thinking, which in turn triggers more negative emotion. Though most people can manage to suppress their counterfactual thoughts before they spin too far down this vicious spiral, some – specially those who suffer from clinical depression – may not be able to arrest the downward pull. ~ Page 152-153
10 years ago. Edited 5 months ago.
 tiabunna
tiabunna club
I'll have to think about all that, Dinesh! :-) HWW.
5 months ago.
 LotharW
LotharW club
HWW Dinesh und eine gute Restwoche!
5 months ago.
 Annemarie
Annemarie club
beautiful

Happy Wednesday!
5 months ago.
 gezginruh
gezginruh club
Nice picture,interesting article,Dinesh!
HWW and have a good week!

Best greetings!
Füsun
5 months ago.
 Jaap van 't Veen
Jaap van 't Veen club
Beautiful work; well captured.
hWW
5 months ago.
 Roger (Grisly)
Roger (Grisly) club
Nice statue in black, excellent capture Dinesh, HWW !
5 months ago.
 Wierd Folkersma
Wierd Folkersma club
lovely shot, HWW!
5 months ago.
 Stephan Fey
Stephan Fey club
HWW, Dinesh! Good day!
5 months ago.
 trester88
trester88 club
Kontrafaktisches Denken wird häufig von negativen Empfindungen begleitet, aber nicht immer. Wenn jemand z. B. einem Verkehrsunfall knapp entgangen ist, dann wird er das als positiv empfinden.
HWW, Dinesh!
5 months ago.
 Loose_Grip/Pete
Loose_Grip/Pete club
HWW Dinesh.
5 months ago.
 Ulrich John
Ulrich John club
HWW, Dinesh !
5 months ago.

Sign-in to write a comment.