Will You Train Harder for the Next Marathon? The Effect of Counterfactual andPrefactual Thinking on Marathon Runners’ Intentions.

摘要

According to the literature, imagining how things would havebeen better in the past (counterfactual thinking) serves toprepare for future, highlighting prescriptions that can beconverted in future intentions and in a more appropriatebehavior. This view implicitly assumes that people thinkabout controllable elements in their counterfactual thoughtsand that the content of imaginary thoughts about the past andthe future is the same. However, some studies (Ferrante,Girotto, Stragà, & Walsh, 2013) found a temporal asymmetrybetween past and future hypothetical thinking: thinking abouthow a failure could be a success in the future (prefactualthinking) elicit more controllable elements than thinkingabout how the same failure could have been a success in thepast. In the present study, we replicated and extendedprevious findings in a more ecological setting. Athletes whohave just run a marathon were asked to generatecounterfactual or prefactual thoughts. The results showed thesame temporal asymmetry found in Ferrante et al. (2013). Inaddition, we found that focusing on training, instead offocusing on other elements, resulted in a greater intention totrain harder for the next marathon in the prefactual condition,but not in the counterfactual condition. Taken together, thesefindings question the postulated preparatory function ofcounterfactual thinking.