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Affective Contrast and Assimilation in Counterfactual Thinking

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Abstract

Previous work has shown that counterfactual thinking, or the imagination of alternatives to reality, yields an affective contrast effect: Thinking about how things could have been better (an upward counterfactual) brings about negative affect, and thinking about how things could have been worse (a downward counterfactual) brings about positive affect. The present research documents affective assimilation: under certain conditions, upward counterfactuals lead to positive affect and downward counterfactuals lead to negative affect. In two studies, participants recalled recent autobiographical events, and were instructed to make specific types of counterfactuals about those events. Results from two studies showed that a focus on a vividly imagined counterfactual simulation (termed an experiential mode) yields affective assimilation, and an evaluative focus on the factual event (termed an evaluative mode) yields affective contrast.

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    AMs can also be manipulated upon retrieval by mentally simulating alternative ways in which past personal events could have occurred but did not – a common psychological phenomenon known as episodic counterfactual thinking – CFT (De Brigard and Parikh, 2019; Roese and Epstude, 2017). Extant evidence has shown that directional CFT (imagining better or worse outcomes) typically elicits emotional responses, such as regret, relief, or simply an increase in the emotional intensity associated with the original event (McMullen, 1997; Roese, 1997). Just as with perspective shifts, recent findings suggest that engaging in CFT during AM retrieval modifies phenomenological characteristics of AMs (De Brigard, Hanna, St. Jacques and Schacter, 2019), and might contribute to regulating their emotional properties (De Brigard and Hanna, 2015; De Brigard and Parikh, 2019).

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This research was supported by NIMH grant MH10460. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Matt McMullen, Psychology Department, Montana State University-Billings, Billings, MT 59101.

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