Ava Gargiulo
Pronouns: She/Her
Research Mentor(s): Julia Smith
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Psychology (Social Area) / LSA
Program: UROP
Session: Session 6 (3:40pm – 4:30pm)
Authors: Julia Smith, Ava Gargiulo, Marcos Torres, David Dunning
Abstract
People often think of alternative outcomes to past events, called counterfactual thoughts, when they experience negative events. Research on the benefits of counterfactual thinking has found that these thoughts influence behavioral intentions to prevent similar unwanted experiences in the future. Despite this, more research is necessary in the realm of political psychology. We surveyed 300 U.S. adults with varying political affiliations and presented them with three fictional vignettes related to gun violence, poverty, and health. Participants provided potential solutions in the form of counterfactual statements beginning with “if onlyâ€. We also collected data on participants’ beliefs about the frequency of broader events related to the vignettes in the United States, and the world. We used participants’ political affiliations, and how common they believed events to be, to predict who or what they included in their counterfactual thoughts. We found that participants of the same political affiliation had more similar counterfactual statements. In addition, we found some evidence that participants tended to blame factors they believed to be abnormal, as opposed to common in the United States.
