Many of us can recount “sliding door” moments where our lives may have taken a very different path if we had chosen other options. These are examples of what are known as “counterfactual thinking”, and research from Kellogg outlines that such thinking can go beyond our personal and professional lives.

The researchers explored how counterfactual thinking operates politically and asked participants what they thought would happen to the world if politicians behaved differently. They were particularly keen to understand whether the apparent rise in partisanship in recent years has affected our ability to think counterfactually.

Open to new thinking

This instinctively seems right, as counterfactual thinking requires one to be open to new thoughts and ideas. The study confirmed this and showed that both Democrats and Republicans were more open to counterfactual scenarios when they aligned with their political views. This then continued in terms of how both sides constructed imaginary scenarios.

Previous research suggests that we tend to prefer so-called upward counterfactual thinking, in which we imagine how things might have been better had we taken a different approach. This is because we often connect counterfactual thinking with the pursuit of a particular goal.

This wasn’t really the case when partisanship entered the equation, however, as we were more likely to view scenarios as plausible when they aligned with our political views, regardless of whether they were upward or downward. The same trend appeared when participants constructed their own scenarios, with their scenarios aligning with their political views rather than gravitating in an upward direction.

Casting blame

The researchers then examined how we apportion blame for negative outcomes. Traditionally, we tend to be more likely to cast blame on someone when a bad outcome was narrowly avoided.

They found that the closer a catastrophe was to happening, the more likely they were to blame the president for the near miss, with this holding true regardless of whether they supported the president or not. Partisanship did affect how much blame was heaped on the president, however.

The results suggest that blame and counterfactuals are closely linked, but that partisanship plays a key role in determining how we use counterfactuals to boost any blame they attach to political foes.