An Overview of Counterfactual Thinking Research

Counterfactual thinking is a thinking activity of denying past events and meanwhile generating a possible hypothesis.According to the nature of premise,it can be classified into additive,subtractive and substitutional,and according to the method of premise comparison,it is either upward counterfactual or downward counterfactual.Counterfactual thinking is formed in two stages,i.e.activation stage and content stage,and has emotional and preparatory functions.This thinking strategy can be utilized to explore the causes of psychological problems and to conduct active intervention which can exert an important influence upon the formation of youth's good personality and healthy psychology.