Choosing remedies after accidents: Counterfactual thoughts and the focus on fixing "human error"

The present research is motivated by an interest in why organizational deci sion makers so often respond to accidents with remedy plans that focus narr owly on correcting human error rather than more environment-focused plans o r more encompassing plans. We investigated the role of counterfactual think ing in the decision-making tendency toward human-focused plans. Our experim ents indicated that even in a domain where human-focused remedies were not otherwise appealing, many participants decided on human-focused remedies af ter they had generated an "if only" conjecture about the accident. This ref lects that human actions are often selected as the focus of "if only" conje ctures and, importantly, that this focus "locks in" and carries through to subsequent remedy decisions. Our hypothesis that remedy plans are produced from "if only" thoughts was supported over several alternative interpretati ons. We discuss implications for research on the relation between counterfa ctual thinking and adaptive learning.