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Related Experiment Videos

"Blaming the victim" under memory load.

Stephen D Goldinger1, Heather M Kleider, Tamiko Azuma

  • 1Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe 85287-1104, USA. goldinger@asu.edu

Psychological Science
|February 5, 2003
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Counterfactual thinking, imagining different outcomes, can bias judgments. Lower working memory capacity individuals are more susceptible to this bias, especially when under cognitive load.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Social Psychology

Background:

  • Counterfactual thinking, imagining alternative outcomes, is a common human response to negative events.
  • While adaptive, it can lead to biases in judgment, such as blame allocation and compensation decisions.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how individual differences in working memory capacity affect susceptibility to counterfactual thinking biases.
  • To examine the role of cognitive load in exacerbating these biases.

Main Methods:

  • Participants with varying working memory capacities made mock-jury decisions on stories presented with or without counterfactual elements.
  • A memory load manipulation was introduced during different task stages.

Main Results:

  • Individuals with lower working memory capacity showed increased susceptibility to counterfactual bias.

Related Experiment Videos

  • This effect was particularly pronounced when participants were under concurrent memory load during judgment.

    • Conclusions:

    • Counterfactual thoughts appear to arise automatically and can influence judgments.
    • Effortful cognitive control, requiring significant mental resources, may be necessary to suppress or discount these biased thoughts.