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The New Economics of Labour Migration theory, recognizes family participation in migration decisions as a strategy for moving out of poverty, thus signaling potential welfare linkages between migrants and family members left behind. The current study investigates the impact of migration on welfare of migrant sending households in rural Zimbabwe using cross-sectional data. The study employed a Counterfactual approach and utilized two stage Heckman selection model to control for selection bias. The results indicated that on average, migration impacts household welfare positively but the welfare gains are not evenly distributed among households. Overall, the welfare of households with migrants would have been 5 percentage points lower if migrant members had stayed at home. Based on the findings, the main recommendation is that policy makers need to consider the removal of de facto and de jure migration restrictions.

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It is well known that cultural difference could affect people’s attitude, behavior and cognitive processes. Previous studies have shown a cross-cultural difference on self-construal between Western Caucasian (WC) and East Asian (EA), as well as their culturally distinguished motivational strategies, cognitive and emotion regulation methods. “Cushion hypothesis” (Hsee & Weber 1999) has suggested that WC were more risk aversive than EA during economic decision, because of dissimilar familial-social economic supporting system between two cultures. The current study digs in depth to these differences in emotional experience associated with decision making and discovers how cultures effect people’s counterfactual emotions—the “what if” emotion—during economic decision making. There are two types of counterfactuals thoughts we are looking at: regret and relief. Regret is triggered if an alternative action would have led to a better outcome, while relief is triggered if an alternative action would lead to equal or worse outcome. WC are expected to be more self-reliance, therefore would be more conservative about financial decision, and greater vigilant at economic choices prompting WC to process prior decision that led to least undesirable economic outcome; while EA are easier to get financial help form their families, would hold a relatively more relax attitude, compare to WC, about risk-taking behavior on economic decision, and be more chilled after receive preferable outcome than WC. Current study will use electropherogram (EEG) to record different event-relative potential (P2, P3 and LPP) and both FC (frontal central lobe) and CP (central parietal lobe) regions to examined how cultural difference affects counterfactual emotions during economic decision making, at both initial spontaneous arousal stage, P2 and conscious effortful emotional appraisal stage, LPP. Additionally, self emotional rating was included in the present study to consolidate validity of the task. In our results, all subjects rated happier on Relief than Regret, and Certain than Gamble conditions, only in Relief condition WC rated happier than EA, and only WC rated happier on Certain condition than Gamble condition. The emotional effect showed at P2 in FC suggested that positive result in regret condition could lead a more intensive immediate emotion arousal. Coincidently, the main effect of emotion at LPP, in the opposite direction compared to P2, at FC, might suggest an overall convoluted counterfactual emotional processing. At P3, choices by culture interaction presented at both region, further, only EA, but not WC, had a greater arousal in gamble condition than certain. This suggested a difference in cognitive processing of choices was different between two cultures. Interestingly, a three-way interaction was found at CP during P3, indicate a complexity of culture discrepancy of emotional process. Finally, a co-relation test between LPP signal and self-emotional rating was conducted, for the coincident of result of main effect of choices plus a marginal choices by culture interaction between behavioral rating and LPP. As the result, only in EA, at both choices conditions, the rating is positively related to LPP amplitude. Overall, both at P3 and LPP we found cultural specialized results correlated with choices condition, which indicated a obscure cultural effect on cognitive process. Moreover, the marginal three-way interaction at P3, CP, may suggest a cultural effects on both economic decision-making related cognitive process and emotional response.

This study aimed to examine the psychological effects of considering a move into residential care. It sought to explore the wistful ‘prefactual’ and ‘counterfactual’ evaluation of ‘what if’ and ‘if only’ scenarios. Sanna, Carter, and Small’s (2006) ‘Time, Environment, Motivation, Personality, and Outcome’ (TEMPO) model was applied to investigate whether individuals moving closer in time to a prefactual scenario (a hypothetical vignette about two older adults facing a move towards residential care) express increased prefactual/counterfactual statements. Additional hypotheses explored the impact of personality and outcome (mood as input) factors on prefactual/counterfactual statement generation. This study employed a naturalistic experimental design. The main grouping variable was each participant’s life stage (working-age adults or older adults). These two groups were selected to represent two distinct stages along the TEMPO timeline. The dependent variable involved the number of written prefactual/counterfactual statements. In total, 33 working-age adults and 33 older adults completed the study. Each wrote what they thought could be better or worse about each character’s position in the prefactual scenario. They also completed relevant demographic information and information about personal circumstances, along with a range of personality measures. Independent-Samples T Tests revealed a significantly higher number of prefactual/counterfactual statements generated by the older adult group for the prefactual scenario. Effect sizes were medium to large. However, tests of personal scenarios, and the effects of personality and outcome did not reach significance. The implications of these findings, in relation to research and clinical work, were discussed. This was particularly in relation to furthering the investigation of prefactual and counterfactual generation and in relation to the significant emotional implications of considering a move away from independent living. The limitations of this research were discussed and related to future research possibilities, particularly concerning the potential impact of prefactual and counterfactual thinking on behaviour.

According to economic rational choice theory greater choice will deliver well-being by increasing the likelihood that individuals satisfy personal preferences (Mas-Colell, Whinston, & Green, 1995). Consequently, extensive choice has become a fundamental aspect of both consumer markets and public policy (Schwartz, 2000; 2004; Botti & Iyengar, 2006). Crucially however, recent psychological research has begun to challenge the assumption that more choice leads to greater well-being. In several instances evidence has been found that whilst some choice is good, more choice can lead to reduced post-decisional satisfaction (e.g. Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; Shar & Wolford, 2007; Reutskaja & Hogarth, 2009). This is referred to as the Excess Choice Effect (ECE). If widespread, this ECE may mean that policies aimed at increasing well-being via choice actually deliver the opposite of their objectives. Although subject to much theoretical speculation, surprisingly little is known about the underlying cause of this effect. In light of this lacuna, the main aim of the current thesis was to investigate an alternative explanation for the ECE – namely, increased counterfactual thought. Across 7 experiments various factors known to influence the availability of counterfactual thoughts were manipulated, and the impact upon the prevalence of the ECE was explored, whilst another experiment (Experiment 7) aimed to determine individuals’ predicted affective responses to extensive choice. Overall, evidence was found that counterfactual thinking appears to play an important role in driving the dissatisfaction often associated with extensive choice. Specifically, the ECE was found to be most prevalent where counterfactual alternatives were made readily available, for example when under low cognitive load, when reflecting upon a recent, real-life decision, and when choice outcomes were negative. Further, in Experiment’s 1, 5, 6, and 8 these ECE’s were found to be significantly mediated by increased counterfactual thought, or the heightened experience of counterfactual emotion, following extensive choice. No evidence for any impact of choice level upon (psychological) satisfaction levels was found when the capacity to think counterfactually was reduced, i.e. via high cognitive load, over time, when reflecting upon a hypothetical scenario, or following a positive choice outcome. Ideas for future research are considered, and the potential implications of these findings for our theoretical understanding of the ECE, for the psychology of choice, for consumer well-being, retailers and the construction of public policy are discussed.

In this report, I first review the evolution of ideas of causation as it relates to causal inference. Then I introduce two currently competing perspectives on this issue: the counterfactual perspective and the noncounterfactual perspective. The ideas of two statisticians, Donald B. Rubin, representing the counterfactual perspective, and A.P.Dawid, representing the noncounterfactual perspective are examined in detail and compared with the evolution of ideas of causality. The main difference between these two perspectives is that the counterfactual perspective is based on counterfactuals which cannot be observed even in principle but the noncounterfactual perspective only relies on observables. I describe the definition of causes and causal inference methods under both perspectives, and I illustrate the application of the two types of methods by specific examples. Finally, I explore various controversies on these two perspectives.

Fairness theory represents a widely cited framework for modeling the cognitive processes that underlie the formation of fairness perceptions in the workplace. Nonetheless, imprecise language and scant empirical research limit its ability to further organizational justice research. Therefore, in this dissertation I provide a review and critique of fairness theory suggesting several revisions. I then build upon this revised model to develop a new model of fairness perception formation. The developed model is tested via a laboratory experiment and a field study, both of which provide initial evidence in favor of the proposed model.

Människor upplever ånger dagligen, och beroende på vilka beslut som fattas kan vissa beslut ångras mer än andra. Därför undersöktes skillnader i typer av ånger med hjälp av webbenkäter som delades via Facebooks PM funktion. 80 deltagare ingick där de fick beskriva två saker som de ångrade mest att de hade gjort samt två saker som de ångrade mest att de inte hade gjort. Dessa skattades sedan på hur mycket de ångrade det samt hur pass viktigt/allvarligt de upplevde det. En signifikant skillnad upptäcktes där saker som de ångrade att de inte hade gjort skattades som viktigare/allvarligare än det som de ångrade att de hade gjort. Inom kategorierna kärlek/sex/äktenskap och familj/vänskap ångrade deltagarna mest saker som de hade gjort respektive inte hade gjort. De omkringliggande faktorerna kan vara det som påverkar upplevelsen av ånger oavsett om det är pågrund av en handling eller icke-handling.

Lewis's counterfactual analysis of causation starts with the claim that c causes e if ~ C > ~ E, where c and e are events, C and E are the propositions that c and e respectively occur, ~ is negation and > is the counterfactual conditional. The purpose of my project is to provide a counterfactual analysis of causation which departs signigicantly from Lewis's starting point, and thus can hope to solve several stubborn problems for that approach. Whereas Lewis starts with a sufficiency claim, my analysis claims that a certain counterfactual is necessary for causation. I say that, if c causes e, then ~ E > ~ C - I call the latter the Reverse Counterfactual. This will often, perhaps always, be a backtracking counterfactual, so two chapters are devoted to defending a conception of counterfactuals which allows backtracking. Thus prepared, I argue that the Reverse Counterfactual is true of causes, but not of mere conditions for an effect. This provides a neat analysis of the principles governing causal selection, which is extended in a discussion of causal transitivity. Standard counterfactual accounts suffer counterexamples from preemption, but I argue that the Reverse Counterfactual has resources to deal neatly with those too. Finally I argue that the Reverse counterfactual, as a necessary condition oncausation, is the most we can hope for: in principle, there can be no counterfactual sufficient condition for causation.