The Effects Of Regulatory Mode And Life Orientation To Counterfactual Thinking In Different Emotional Conditions

Counterfactual thinking is a common psychology phenomenon in social life and it is one of the veryimportant issues in decision-making research. Counterfactual thinking refers to mental constructions ofalternatives to past events.There are many factors that influence the production of counterfactualthinking,such as individual's behavior manner,personality tendencies,the decision result anddecision-making environment.There is increasing recognition of the importance of counterfactualthinking,but researchers have focused on the study of the concepts,the classifications,the producingprocess,the influencing factors,the functions and the research methods of counterfactual thinking,and soon.Overall,there is need to further research on counterfactual thinking.Based on previous studies,thepresent studies examined the influence of regulatory mode and life orientation on engaging incounterfactual thinking in different emotional conditions.The pre-study revised "the Locomotion and Assessment Scales",which was developed by Kruglanskiet al..In this part,this study takes the Chinese university students as participants to discuss the method ofmeasuring individual differences in self-regulatory mode,and provided tools for the further research.Study1used a scenario and participants of different regulatory mode were asked with an openquestion to write down freely the thoughts that had come to their mind in order to examine whether therewill be individual differences on the type and the amount of counterfactual thinking in different emotionalconditions.The results revealed main effect for moods on the type of counterfactual thiking,and maineffect for regulatory mode on the amount of counterfactual thiking. Assessmentors generated morecounterfactual thinking than Locomotionors,and participants put into positive moods generated moredownward counterfactual thinking,but participants put into negative moods generated more upward counterfactual thinking.Study2also used a scenario and participants of different life orientation were asked with an openquestion to write down freely the thoughts that had come to their mind,in order to examine whether therewill be individual differences on the type and the amount of counterfactual thiking in different emotionalconditions.The results revealed main effect for life orientation and moods on the type of counterfactualthiking,and there was a mood×life orientation interaction. Participants put into positive moods generatedmore downward counterfactual thinking,but participants put into negative moods generated more upwardcounterfactual thinking. Life orientation as a stable personality factors,and optimists generated moredownward counterfactual thinking than pessimists,and pessimists generated more downward counterfactualthinking than optimists. For optimists,more downward counterfactual thinking were generated than upwardcounterfactual thinking,and for pessimists,more upward counterfactual thinking were generated thandownward counterfactual thinking.Manipulated moods influence the counterfactual mental simulations ofpessimists and optimists.Finally, the limitation of the present research and the future research directions were also discussed.