The debiasing effect of counterfactuals

People are not fully rational and their decisions are affected by factors such as situational context, emotions, and cognitive capacity. Often, the decision-making situation is unclear, and we do not have enough relevant information. In this case we use shortcuts, which can lead to cognitive biases. Cognitive biases can affect our decision-making processes, and we are not able to make the decision in an unbiased way. They are present in a wide range of situations, and they can affect our job, relationships, and decisions about investments. Subsequently, we can often regret our decisions. Our regret is not the only reason for debiasing. A biased decision-making process can also affect the lives of other people, as a direct result of our wrong decisions. The fact that groups and organizations (Kramer, 1994), forensic specialists (Kassin, Dror, & Kukucka, 2013), investors (Baker & Nofsinger, 2002) lawyers (Wistrich & Rachlinski, 2013) or doctors (Bornstein & Emler, 2001) sometimes make their decisions in a biased way can directly affect decisions about guilt/innocence, in/appropriate treatments and influence everything from our finances to our health. That is the real reason for debiasing. Larrick (2004) defined three kinds of debiasing. The first type of debiasing interventions are motivational practices such as incentives or accountability. The second type of debiasing interventions involves cognitive methods like considering the opposite method, training or counterfactual priming. The third type of debiasing interventions are modern technologies such as the pros and cons lists or group decision-making. We assume that effective debiasing of cognitive biases should be based on cognitive debiasing interventions. The aim of our study was to investigate the effectiveness of counterfactual priming, as a cognitive intervention, in reducing three cognitive biases: confirmation bias, as the tendency to search for information in line with our assumptions, the status quo bias, as the preference of the current state, and the attribution effect, as the tendency to attribute behavior based more on personality than on situational context. Counterfactual priming should create the “what would happen if” kind of thinking. The participants (N = 202) of our between-subject experiment were recruited online. They solved two tasks on cognitive biases: one before (control group) and one after (experimental group) the experimental manipulation. Before the second task, they read a counterfactual scenario (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000) as the experimental manipulation. The counterfactual scenario was about Jane, who could have won a trip to Hawaii, had she not changed her seat. After the concert, Jane is thinking about her gains and losses because of changing the seat. For each bias we used the typical research method. The confirmation bias method was inspired by Snyder and Swann (1978), Strachanová and Valuš (2019) and involved a social domain of speed dating, where participants chose from a list of questions to test their hypothesis about the introversion of a fictitious person. 131 participants, 64 from the control group and 67 from the experimental group, solved the confirmation bias task. Participants had to imagine that Teresa is preparing for speed dating and she will have only a few minutes to get to know the fictitious person better so she should choose/prepare questions she would like to ask on the speed date. Participants got the list of questions (5 neutral, 5 extroverted, 5 introverted) and chose the questions Teresa should ask on the speed date in order to determine her assumption. In line with Strachanová and Valuš (2019), we used the fundamental attribution error. This task was solved by 133 participants, from which 71 were in the control group and 62 in the experimental group. Participants had to evaluate the cause of behavior (situation/personality) of a fictitious co-worker, following a short scenario involving the co-worker. Participants answered using the Likert scale, assessing whether the reason for the co-worker ́s behavior was a situational circumstance or his/her personality. The status quo bias task was inspired by Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988) and used in line with Človek a spoločnosť [Individual and Society], 2019, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 1-10. The debiasing effect of counterfactuals 2 Dudeková, Kostovičová and Konečný (2017). The task for the status quo was solved by 140 participants, from which 67 were in the experimental group and 73 in the control group. Participants had to choose one of the three investment portfolios, of which one was the default option (status quo) participants had to imagine that they had inherited property and had to decide whether to keep the investment method as before or change it. We investigated the debiasing effect of counterfactuals on three cognitive biases (status quo, attribution effect, confirmation bias). Although in the confirmation bias participants in the experimental group asked fewer questions regarding introversion, this result was not statistically significant; in the cumulative confirmation bias score counterfactual priming did not decrease this tendency. Similarly, counterfactual priming did not decrease the status quo bias or the fundamental attribution error. In sum, our results show no debiasing effect of counterfactuals in cognitive biases. We discuss the two functions of counterfactuals. Counterfactuals can be upward and downward. Upward counterfactuals have a preparative function, thus thinking of a better result can make us feel bad, but it can improve our results in the future. Downward counterfactuals have an affective function, which can improve coping mechanisms and well-being. It means that counterfactuals can comfort us, but they can cause anxiety and regret as well. Roese (2004) says that downward counterfactuals cause a more positive effect compared to upward counterfactuals. This means that success behavior is influenced by the direction of counterfactuals. The author says that downward counterfactuals (thinking about alternatives worse than reality) make people feel better and upward counterfactuals (thinking about alternatives better than reality) can improve performance. We used mixed counterfactuals in our counterfactual scenario and we primed participants to think about what they lose and what they gain from situations. Subsequent research should examine the effect of counterfactual thinking separately for upward and downward counterfactuals to see its effect on cognitive biases. There are limitations of our research. We did not consider cultural differences in cognitive biases because they are not well-examined. Therefore, in the future a pre-test for cognitive biases methods should be carried out in order to see its functionality in Bulgaria, and the sample size should be bigger. Our research brings new evidence in cognitive biases and debiasing by counterfactual thinking and it expands the field for future research.