Young children's counterfactual thinking: Triggered by the negative emotions of others

Three experiments examined the influence of other people's negative emotions on young children's counterfactual thinking. Experiment 1 (N = 48) explored whether 4- to 6-year-olds could think counterfactually about both physical and emotional events using the discriminating counterfactual tasks that children could not respond correctly without thinking counterfactually. Experiment 1 showed that 4- to 6-year-olds could think of counterfactuals associated with emotional events. Experiment 2 (N = 97) and Experiment 3 (N = 48) examined whether a protagonist's emotional state (emotional expression condition) affected 4- to 6-year-olds' ability to think counterfactually about physical events. It was shown that emotional expression conditions enhanced young children's counterfactual thinking about physical events. These findings suggest that 5- and 6-year-olds can think counterfactually and that emotional components trigger such thinking.