Children’s understanding of counterfactual alternatives

Children’s Understanding of Counterfactual Alternatives Rachel McCloy (r.a.mccloy@reading.ac.uk) Department of Psychology, University of Reading Reading, U.K., RG6 6AL Paul Strange (paul.s.strange@hotmail.co.uk) Department of Psychology, University of Reading Reading, U.K., RG6 6AL Abstract This study examines how children integrate information about counterfactual alternatives in making judgments. Previous research in adults had shown that they make judgments on the basis of comparisons between factual events and counterfactual alternatives. We suggest that children adopt a summative strategy instead, where they focus on the presented outcomes, both real and counterfactual, and base their judgments on the overall affective quality of these outcomes. Results from a single experiment comparing adults’ and children’s responses to a counterfactual judgment task show that children do tend to use a summative strategy as opposed to the comparative strategy adopted by adults. These results were further supported by participants’ justifications of their judgments, which were alternative focused for the adults, but outcome focused for the children. The results are discussed in relation to complexity-based theories of the development of human reasoning. Keywords: Counterfactual; children; reasoning. development; complexity; Introduction The ability to consider alternatives is a key component of human rationality (e.g., Byrne, 2005). Both children and adults are frequently exposed to situations where their ability to consider alternative outcomes is an important determinant of their interpretation of these situations. A recent and important example is a government road safety advertisement that shows what happens following a car crash and then rewinds to show an alternative outcome if the young passengers had been wearing seatbelts prior to the crash (www.dft.gov.uk/think/). Findings from empirical research with adults suggest that they would experience negative emotions in response to such an advertisement, as a consequence of comparing what actually happened with its more positive alternative (e.g., Markman, Gavanski, Sherman & McMullen, 1993; Medvec, Madey & Gilovich, 1995). However, it is not clear that children necessarily make the same comparison and therefore whether they would experience similar negative emotions. In this study, we will investigate similarities and differences between adult and children’s consideration of alternatives, along with the effects of these considerations on individual judgments, emotional responses and decisions. Varieties of Counterfactual Thinking When people think about how things could, should or would have been different if other events had happened, they are considering what are known as counterfactual alternatives (i.e., alternatives states of affairs that are contrary to what actually occurred). The consideration of such alternatives has been shown to have profound consequences for people’s judgments, their emotions and their decisions (e.g., Roese, 1994; Davis, Lehman, Wortman, Silver & Thompson, 1995; McCloy & Byrne, 2002). Counterfactual alternatives can be categorized in a number of ways. When we imagine a state of affairs that results in an outcome which was better than what actually occurred (e.g., “If I had been driving more slowly, I wouldn’t have crashed the car”), this is known as upward counterfactual thinking (Markman, et al., 1993). This can be compared with downward counterfactual thinking, where we imagine alternative states of affairs that would have resulted in a worse outcome than what actually occurred (e.g., “If I hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt, I would have been seriously injured”; Markman et al., 1993). Upward and downward counterfactual thinking have different consequences for our judgments, emotions and decisions. Following negative outcomes, imagining how things could have been better (an upward counterfactual) can make people feel worse about what happened to them, whereas imagining how things could have been worse (a downward counterfactual) can make people feel better about the same event (Roese, 1994; Medvec, et al., 1995). Although they can make people feel worse about negative events, upward counterfactual thoughts have a functional component, in that they may help people prepare for the future, by suggesting alternative courses of action which may lead to positive outcomes (Roese, 1994; Epstude & Roese, 2007). A further distinction can be made between “pure” counterfactuals, where a change to antecedent events results in a different outcome to what actually occurred (whether that be better or worse than the actual outcome), and