"If Only..!"

Some psychological theories behind how we make judgements on the cause of outcomes (Counterfactual thinking)

It’s an interesting time at the moment. We’re in the lead up to a general election and as per the last few times we’ve gone to the polls, social media is presenting a vast array of inputs and information that, as a psychologist who spends a lot of time looking at comms, is offering up a goldmine of ‘textbook’ cognitive patterns.?

One that’s really been doing the rounds in everything from TV debates through to chats around dinner tables is:?

“if only <insert political rival here> hadn’t <insert decision you’re opposed to here>, then we wouldn’t be in this state.”?

In fact, it was a tweet by the chronically controversial figure, Dan Wootton, that was the catalyst for me publishing this post. After the recent TV debates featuring 7 of the parties all together, he tweeted that Liz Truss didn’t crash the economy, it was the (what he deemed unnecessary) covid lockdowns that did it.?

Before we go on, I’d like to put it on record here that I don’t follow the man on social media, and nor do I share his views.?

Enough of him… now, let’s dig into the psychology!

Seeing that tweet and hearing other thoughts being aired in various parts of life has found me telling many people about the psychology behind these statements & thinking patterns. It’s called ‘counterfactual thinking’ - and we do it a lot. In fact, in many organisations and job roles, we’re actively prompted to do it.?

• Assessing how a marketing campaign could’ve performed differently? You’re counterfactual thinking.?
• Analysing what the reason was for a client to become dissatisfied with the advice they’ve been given? You’re counterfactual thinking.?

Any ‘post mortem’ of an outcome is counterfactual thinking. End of quarter sales, risk management, why we were late for a meeting. It’s happening all the time.?

It’s so common in human thinking patterns that it’s been the subject of extensive psychological research for decades. From that, two prominent patterns have been identified:

Pattern 1: Wanting to ‘undo’ the last thing in a series of events.

The ‘CTRL + Z’ moments in life

Imagine you’re watching an early 00s gameshow. Jasper Carrot’s Golden Balls, if you will. The contestants are playing a game where they both stand to win ￡2000. They each have a shuffled deck of cards and are told that if they both draw a matching colour card (either both red, or both black), they’ll win ￡2000. If their cards don’t match, they both lose.?

Mark goes first and pulls the King of Hearts from his deck.

Jack goes next and pulls the Ace of Spades from his.?

They lose. No ￡2000 for Mark or Jack.?

Ask yourself,?

• Which of these actions (i.e., Mark pulling his red card, or Jack pulling his black card) would you change to make it a winning outcome??
• Which player would likely feel a bit more responsible for the losing outcome?

If you said Jack for these, you’re not alone. When this same scenario was presented to participants in a prominent counterfactual thinking study, most people chose to change the second player’s black card to be a red card in order for this to be a winning outcome.?

Even though we know it’s a game of chance and each of them have an even probability of picking either a red or black card, most people instantly think ‘if only Jack had picked a red card, then they’d have won’. It also feels likely that he might feel more guilt or slightly more responsible for the losing outcome.?

This wanting to ‘undo’ the last thing that happened is known as the temporal order effect within psychology and it’s one of two very common counterfactual thinking patterns - the other being the causal order effect…

Pattern 2: If only I hadn’t stopped to talk to Brenda

Aka: the causal order effect

This is nothing personal against ‘Brenda’. But in this scenario, we’re going to imagine a series of events:?

There’s a limited edition sale on a product that you’re itching to get your hands on. As you step outside your front door your neighbour (Brenda) stops to ask you a question. You wrap it up as quickly as you can, but you end up setting off 10 minutes after you’d planned. On the way there, you encounter some roadworks which result in a 10 minute traffic jam. You make it to the car park but after queuing for a while, you discover it’s completely full. So you drive to a different car park, which is about 10 mins walk from your destination. When you get to the sale, you discover the last product had just been sold. You miss out.?

We’ve all had annoying series of events happen like these.?

• In this scenario, which event would you change to make it so you made it to the sale in time??
• Which event would you instinctively regret happening more?

Most of the time, when presented with a chain of 4 or so events, people tend to place more responsibility on the first event in the sequence for the outcome.

‘If only I hadn’t stopped to chat to Brenda for so long, I might’ve missed all the other hold ups’.?

This is known as the causal order effect, and both this and the temporal order effect can be partly explained by mental anchors. That is, that the first item we encounter in a sequence can often act as an ‘anchor’. In the case of the temporal order effect with the two playing cards, the first card seems almost ‘immovable’ and it feels better to undo the 2nd card to make that one match the first, even though either player had an equal chance of affecting the result. ?

For those who are familiar with 'temporal order effects' in human memory, this is an example of the recency effect being at play for how we make judgements.

In the case of the causal order effect and us missing out on that coveted item in the sale, the first event in the series seems to be the most salient item that sets the starting point for the rest of the delays, so most people would deem that to be most responsible for the outcome. This is also an example of the primacy effect.

What about the political ‘who dunnit’ surrounding ‘crashing the economy’?

Well, we can argue that Mr Wootton is displaying the causal order effect in his Tweet (ie., blaming something salient at an earlier point in a series of events), whereas the people he was arguing against might’ve been displaying the temporal order effect.?

So, the next time you’re analysing the contributing factors to a not-so-desirable outcome, maybe your team is assessing what was to blame for your company missing out on a contract, or dear old Brenda has stopped for a natter once more, ask yourself, is an equal weighting being placed on every contributing factor? If you / others around you seem dead certain that the first thing or last thing in the chain of events is more to blame, you could well be witnessing these common patterns in counterfactual thinking without realising.*?

As with most things relating to human cognition and behaviour, things aren't always as straight forward as we might believe.

*needless to say, sometimes the first or last thing really is more to blame too.?

References:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S001002772100127X

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03195831

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-09844-001