ABSTRACT
In psychology, counterfactual means primarily the retrospective consideration of a person's real-life experience in relation to missed opportunities or a decision, wrongly taken, which could have led to a better outcome than actually occurred. Historiography deals with historical facts and subsequent thought experiments: how some historical events could have been written differently if, for example, a battle, an election or a summit talk had had different outcomes. Counterfactual thinking can be described as a mental attempt to change an aspect in the past hypothetically and to imagine what could have been different, and how that might have led to a different present and future. Counterfactual thoughts are likely to be activated after an experience with negative emotions. Counterfactual thoughts are commonly associated with strong emotions, such as regret, guilt, relief and satisfaction, and in social assessments like blame, responsibility and causal judgements.
