← all facts
emotion
You suffer most when you imagine how things might be.
Counterfactual thinking is the tendency to mentally simulate alternative outcomes for past events.
Research finds that imagining scenarios, especially those nearly missed, leads to more intense emotional regret than imagining purely hypothetical improvements. You punish yourself by comparing your reality to a phantom version of events.
You create your own misery by replaying unchosen paths.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Kahneman & Tversky, 1982
- What the check found
- The attribution to Kahneman & Tversky (1982) is standard for the 'near miss' simulation heuristic. While the exact wording about 'regret' is modern, it is an accepted interpretation of their seminal 1982 research.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.