COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING AND ASCRIPTIONS OF CAUSE AND PREVENTABILITY

Research suggests that counterfactuals (i.e., thoughts of how things m ight have been different) play an important role in determining the pe rceived cause of a target outcome. Results from 3 scenario studies ind icate that counterfactual content overlapped primarily with thoughts o f how an outcome might have been prevented (preventability ascriptions ) rather than with thoughts of how it might have been caused (causal a scriptions). Counterfactuals and preventability ascriptions focused ma inly on controllable antecedents, whereas causal ascriptions focused m ainly on antecedents that covaried with the target outcome over a foca l set of instances. Contrary to current theorizing, causal ascriptions were unrelated to counterfactual content (Study 3). Results indicate that the primary criterion used to recruit causal ascriptions (covaria tion) differs from that used to recruit counterfactuals (controllabili ty).