Have you ever encountered those times where you were walking on a grass patch looking straight ahead and your friend beside you suddenly screams, "Watch out for that dog &*#$ !!!".
*Phew*... thanks pal... then you step around the warm fresh pile of you know what. Just a few seconds later you both hear a yelp and spin around to find a very sexy lady frantically shaking off the poop from her shoes. "Wah heng ah !!! Could have been me!", you gleefully exclaim [Downward Counterfactual Thought: Reflecting on how a situation might have been worse]. Your friend, however approaches the lady and offers assistance and after the ordeal he returns with her number and you say, "Aiya!! I should have approached her first.. you very LuCkY ah!! [Upward Counterfactual Thought], and then, "Oh yah.. forgot I'm married hor... good thing my wife is so caring and loving [Downward Counterfactual Thought]".
Counterfactual thoughts are actually thoughts which focus on 'how a situation might have been otherwise', or 'how things might have been different'. As its name implies, it is a counter to a fact which currently exists.
As you have noticed, upward counterfactual thinking is related to negative thinking whereas upward counterfactual thinking is related to positive thoughts. Also related to upward and downward social comparison. As the textbook would have it, Upward Counterfactual focuses on 'wanting to improve' whereas for Downward Counterfactual it is on 'wanting to feel better'.
Also it is visible that upward counterfactual thinking often arouses negative emotions, which could generate ideas about how to avoid negative outcomes in future whereas downward counterfactual thinking often arouses positive emotions, which could be cleverly used to improve our mood or heal our self-esteem.
All my definitions are straight from the text...
cheers.
3 comments:
i agree with what you have said about conterfactual thinking. However, I notice that among the people I know, most people tend to engage in a lot of upward thinking. We always compare ourselves with someone better or how we could have done something that would have benefitted us even more.
The other form of thinking, downward counterfactual thinking usually occurs mainly when we have a near miss, a situation wherey we almost did domething bad but managed to avoid it, like your dog poo incident.
your post reminded me of my jc days, where the canteen had many pipes and poles on top. and those birds. those (!$#@!D@&) birds (!!) so love to perch on them and it's really holy (shiat), they shit on you.
and because the canteen is small, it's quite obvious when someone has just experienced some very unholy blessing. and i'd think, oh thank god i wasn't sitting there.
relieve. Haa!
dear?
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