Plausibility in episodic counterfactual thinking does not depend on the difficulty of the mental simulation

People often engage in episodic counterfactual thinking, simulating alternative ways in which past events might have unfolded. Existing research has shown that the perceived plausibility of episodic counterfactual simulations influences judgments of regret, mood, prosocial behavior, and false memories. However, knowledge about the factors influencing the perceived plausibility of episodic counterfactuals is limited or derived from studies using vignettes or semantic-based hypothetical scenarios. In this study, we explore three potential factors that may influence the perceived plausibility of episodic counterfactual thoughts: the difficulty of generating the simulation, the vividness of the simulation, and a sampling process that prioritizes plausible alternatives. Experiment 1 (N = 91) showed that while plausibility is related to both difficulty and vividness, it does not depend solely on either factor. Experiments 2 (N = 468) and 3 (N = 77) revealed that when people generate episodic counterfactual thoughts, they initially produce the most plausible and vivid mental simulations, without concurrent changes in difficulty. Overall, our findings suggest that the perceived plausibility of episodic counterfactual simulations, while may depend in part on their vividness and sampling order, does not depend on how difficult it feels to imagine them.