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Was It My Fault? Effects of Counterfactual Mutation Focus and Self‐Presentation Strategy 1
Author(s) -
Fraser Christopher O.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2001.tb02663.x
Subject(s) - counterfactual thinking , blame , outcome (game theory) , psychology , context (archaeology) , social psychology , perspective (graphical) , presentation (obstetrics) , counterfactual conditional , computer science , economics , medicine , microeconomics , paleontology , radiology , artificial intelligence , biology
A recent perspective proposes that counterfactual thinking mutates controllable events that could have prevented a specific outcome, and so provides knowledge that can be used to prevent similar outcomes in the future. This implies that counterfactual thinking does not necessarily influence causal reasoning, although they may be associated in some circumstances. Results of 2 studies reported here show that, for serious outcomes where actions of the self are antecedents and different self‐actions might have prevented the outcome, there was an associated increase in self‐blame. Findings from these studies also suggest that whether self‐mutations are reflected in public expressions of blame will depend on whether the context favors self‐serving self‐presentation strategies, or mitigating strategies incorporating the face concerns of others.