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Related Concept Videos

Counterfactual Thinking01:19

Counterfactual Thinking

138
Counterfactual thinking is a cognitive process wherein individuals mentally reconstruct alternative versions of past events, often beginning with “what if” or “if only.” This reflective mechanism plays a significant role in shaping emotional experiences and guiding future behavior. Though typically triggered by unfavorable or unexpected outcomes, counterfactual thinking can also emerge in mundane, everyday decisions and experiences, revealing its deep entrenchment in...
138
Bias01:22

Bias

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Bias refers to any tendency that prevents a question from being considered unprejudiced. In research, bias occurs when one outcome or answer is selected or encouraged over others in sampling or testing. Bias can occur during any research phase, including study design, data collection, analysis, and publication.
In statistics, a sampling bias is created when a sample is collected from a population, and some members of the population are not as likely to be chosen as others (remember, each member...
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The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies
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"Should've known better": Counterfactual processing in disordered gambling.

Yin Wu1, Dawn Kennedy2, Caylee-Britt Goshko2

  • 1School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China; Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Affective and Social Cognitive Science, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.

Addictive Behaviors
|September 9, 2020
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Individuals with gambling disorder exhibit heightened sensitivity to anticipated regret and blunted emotional responses, impacting decision-making. These cognitive alterations may contribute to gambling-related distortions and marketing influences.

Keywords:
Affective sensitivityCounterfactual thinkingGambling disorderRegretRisk-taking

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroeconomics
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Counterfactual thinking, or "if only" thinking, influences decision-making and is linked to emotions like regret and relief.
  • This cognitive process may underlie phenomena in disordered gambling, such as responses to near-misses.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To compare counterfactual thinking and emotional reactivity in individuals with gambling disorder versus healthy controls.
  • To investigate decision-making alterations in gambling disorder using a computational choice model.

Main Methods:

  • A behavioral economic choice task comparing two gambles was administered to individuals with gambling disorder (n=46) and healthy controls (n=25).
  • Participants rated their affect following obtained and non-obtained outcomes.
  • A computational model analyzed choices, deriving parameters for sensitivity to expected value, risk variance, and anticipated regret.

Main Results:

  • Individuals with gambling disorder demonstrated increased sensitivity to anticipated regret and risk variance, alongside reduced sensitivity to expected value.
  • The gambling disorder group showed blunted emotional sensitivity to both obtained and counterfactual outcomes.
  • Effect sizes for group differences were modest.

Conclusions:

  • Participants with gambling disorder exhibit significant alterations in decision-making processes and emotional reactivity.
  • Altered sensitivity to anticipatory regret in gambling disorder may foster cognitive distortions and susceptibility to gambling marketing.