Counterfactual research and Norrn Theory (Kahneman & Miller, 1986) predict that abnormal antecedents will be more mutable than normal antecedents. Individuals who behaved abnormally prior to accidental or criminal victimization (e.g., choosing a different route home) are usually awarded higher compensation than those victimized in more routine circumstances. Abnormality is said to provoke more available alternatives, and is cited as a positive correlate of affect (the emotional amplification hypothesis). Enhanced affective response is said to be responsible for greater compensation to victims and more severe punishment of offenders. This thesis challenged the notion that exceptional circumstances always have more available alternatives than do routine circumstances, incorporating higher methodological rigor and a more realistic legal context than previous studies. Results indicated that the degree of alternative availability is not so much a function of normality itself but of how normality is conveyed in scenarios. Routine circumstances can be just as mutable as exceptional circumstances. Scenario studies investigating criminal punishment which separated alternative availability and normality provided evidence of a moderating effect of availability, as well as an interaction between victim and offender availability. The findings help to revise assertions made by psychological and legal scholars concerning mutability.

It is argued that an analysis of causation using counterfactual conditionals can be given. Causes and effects are considered to be propositional entities, and a semantics for counterfactuals employing possible worlds is presupposed. The analysis stems from an attempt to handle cases proving problematic for other counterfactual analyses. Preempted causes, which would have been causes had they not been preempted by causes, are distinguished from causes by requiring that a causal chain connecting cause and effect exist. The condition is strengthened to require that the causal chain still would have existed even had the preempted causes been false. Causal chains are analyzed as sequences of true propositions satisfying two conditions: any member after the first would not have been true had its immediate predecessor alone been false, and the truth of any member of the sequence is sufficient for the truth of any subsequent member. The analysis is weakened slightly to permit many causes to overdetermine an effect. The analysis is then amended to exclude certain noncausal connections. Though it is true that had Socrates not died, Xanthippe would not have become a widow, his dying did not cause her to become a widow. To yield this result, an analysis is offered of the relation that logically simple propositions bear to the more complex propositions that they make true. It is then proposed that the sets of simple propositions making the cause and effect true not entail the effect and the cause, respectively. Finally, an attempt is made to distinguish between cause and effect. It is argued that cases of backward causation are possible, and thus no analysis should require causes to be temporally prior to effects. It is proposed that only when there is symmetry with respect to the subjunctive conditions of the analysis should temporal considerations be employed to discriminate cause and effect.

Counterfactuals generated by people who have experienced traumatic life events were examined to elucidate their significance for the coping process. In Study 1, 93 respondents were interviewed 4-7 years after the loss of their spouse or child in a motor vehicle accident. In Study 2, 124 respondents were interviewed 3 weeks and 18 months following the death of their child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Across these two studies it was found that (a) counterfactuals that undid the traumatic event were commonly reported; (b) the focus of counterfactuals was typically on one's own (in)actions, rather than on the behavior of others; (c) the more freguently respondents were undoing the event, the more distress they reported; and (d) this relation held even after controlling for more general ruminations. In Study 3, 106 respondents were interviewed one week following their spinal cord injury. In this study, self-implicating counterfactuals were shown to predict ascriptions of self-blame, controlling for causal attributions and foreseeability estimates. Taken together, these field data suggest that counterfactuals play an important role in how people cope with traumatic life events. Possible roles that these counterfactual thoughts might play are discussed.

Counterfactual thoughts involve the consideration of how events might have progressed differently. These conditional statements include an antecedent (e.g., "If only I were less impulsive") and a consequent (e.g., "I would not have been unfaithful") (Markman, Gavanski, Sherman, & McMullen, 1993). The statements allow an alternate ending to what actually occurred and they often occur spontaneously. Such statements have many variations and may evoke negative (e.g., Regret that my relationship might be over) and positive (e.g., Hope that I am learning from my mistakes) reactions.This study investigated the relationship between other-generated counterfactual statements and the recipient's emotional response to these statements. Vignettes were developed by the author and distributed to a college student population. The content of the vignettes involved an individual was involved in a romantic infidelity and then entered group therapy to deal with this issue. Another group member makes a counterfactual statement to this individual referencing this incident. Direction of the counterfactual statement, severity of the negative event and its potential repeatability were all considered in assessing this relationship.A 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design was used. Direction of the counterfactual statement (i.e., upward, downward), event repeatability (repeatable, nonrepeatable) and severity of infidelity (low, high) all served as between-subject factors. The two dependent variables were the Positive Affect and Negative Affect subscales of the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS). Statistical analysis involved two analyses of variance (ANOVA), one for each dependent variable.No significant univariate interactions or main effects were found. In short, the results of the current study failed to support any of the author's hypotheses. The amounts of positive and negative affect that participants felt did not vary significantly as a function of counterfactual direction, severity of negative event or repeatability. It appears that the within group differences are larger than the between group differences. These results suggest that individuals' responses to other-generated counterfactual statements differ from their responses to self-generated counterfactual thoughts. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

Counterfactuals generated by people who have experienced traumatic life events were examined to elucidate their significance for the coping process. In Study 1, 93 respondents were interviewed 4-7 years after the loss of their spouse or child in a motor vehicle accident. In Study 2, 124 respondents were interviewed 3 weeks and 18 months following the death of their child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Across these two studies it was found that (a) counterfactuals that undid the traumatic event were commonly reported; (b) the focus of counterfactuals was typically on one's own (in)actions, rather than on the behavior of others; (c) the more freguently respondents were undoing the event, the more distress they reported; and (d) this relation held even after controlling for more general ruminations. In Study 3, 106 respondents were interviewed one week following their spinal cord injury. In this study, self-implicating counterfactuals were shown to predict ascriptions of self-blame, controlling for causal attributions and foreseeability estimates. Taken together, these field data suggest that counterfactuals play an important role in how people cope with traumatic life events. Possible roles that these counterfactual thoughts might play are discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Counterpossibles are counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents. The problem of counterpossibles is easiest to state within the "nearest possible world" framework for counterfactuals: on this approach, a counterfactual is true (roughly) when the consequent is true in the "nearest" possible world where the antecedent is true. Since counterpossibles have necessarily false antecedents, there is no possible world where the antecedent is true. On the approach favored by Lewis, Stalnaker, Williamson, and others, counterpossibles are all trivially true. I introduce several arguments against the trivial approach. First, it is counter-intuitive to think that all counterpossibles are true. Second, if all counterpossibles were true, then we could not make sense of their use in logical, philosophical, or mathematical arguments. Making sense of the role of sentences like these requires that they not have vacuous truth conditions. The account of counterpossibles I ultimately favor is an extension of the "nearest possible world" semantics discussed above. The Lewis/Stalnaker account is supplemented with the addition of impossible worlds, and the nearness metric is extended to range over these impossible worlds as well as possible worlds. Thus, a counterfactual is true when its consequent is true in the nearest world where the antecedent is true; if the counterfactual's antecedent is impossible, then the nearest world in question will be an impossible world. Once the framework of impossible worlds and similarity is in place, we can put it to use in the analysis of other philosophical phenomena. I examine one proposal that makes use of a theory of counterpossibles to develop an analysis of the notion of metaphysical dependence.

Kwong Yuk Yee, Jessica. / "June 2002." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-97). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

Counterfactual thought is thinking about what might have been. It is remembering the past, not as it actually happened, but how we wish it happened. Research has shown that counterfactual thought affects a wide range of psychological processes including emotion and decision making. This research examined the counterfactual thoughts of individuals engaged in a gambling task. A 2 (outcome groups) X 2 (counterfactual direction) X 4 (gambling type) Analysis of Variance did not find significant differences in the number of counterfactuals generated between gambling groups. It was found, however, that individuals who lost the task generated more counterfactuals than individuals who won the task. The discussion section explains how future researchers could use this unique task along with a more sophisticated method of assessing counterfactual thought to understand more fully how counterfactual thought affects gambling behavior. / Department of Psychological Science

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed December 5, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 160-164).

Mediation is used to separate direct and indirect effects of an exposure variable on anoutcome variable. In this thesis, a mediation model is extended to account for censoredmediator and outcome variable. The two-part framework is used to account for thecensoring. The counterfactual based causal effects of this model are derived. A MonteCarlo study is performed to evaluate the behaviour of the causal effects accounting forcensoring, together with a comparison with methods for estimating the causal effectswithout accounting for censoring. The results of the Monte Carlo study show that theeffects accounting for censoring have substantially smaller bias when censoring is present.The proposed effects also seem to have a low cost with unbiased estimates for samplesizes as small as 100 for the two-part mediator model. In the case of limited mediatorand outcome, sample sizes larger than 300 is required for reliable improvements. A smallsensitivity analysis stresses the need of further development of the two-part models.