# overview
Our research focuses on the social cognitive processes involved in decision-making. Our primary research focuses on counterfactual thinking, which are thoughts of "if only" or "what might have been". Imagining how events might have turned out differently is a common cognitive process, especially after negative events and near misses. Research shows that these counterfactual thoughts can be both dysfunctional and functional, depending on the situation. Our research examines both sides of the counterfactual coin: the bias and the benefits of counterfactual thinking. We are particularly interested in how and why these thoughts occur and their affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences. Importantly our current projects examine both the basic science behind counterfactual thinking and also how it can be applied to both mental health and health behavior domains. Other research in the lab examines various factors involved in decision-making, with interdisciplinary work examining decision-making and motivation in engineering.

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5204 Cognitive And Computational Psychology

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5201 Applied And Developmental Psychology

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5204 Cognitive And Computational Psychology

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Attention Deficit Disorder With Hyperactivity

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5204 Cognitive And Computational Psychology

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5204 Cognitive And Computational Psychology

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35 Commerce, Management, Tourism And Services

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3507 Strategy, Management And Organisational Behaviour

# educationAndTraining[].organization.label
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign - (Urbana, Illinois, United States)

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Cornell University - (Ithaca, New York, United States)

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University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign - (Urbana, Illinois, United States)

# publications[].label
Ethnicity, age, and education influence perceptions of vegetable healthiness and macronutrient content.

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Motivated by us But Not by Them: Group Membership Influences the Impact of Counterfactual Thinking on Behavioral Intentions

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Valence-Dependent Self-Scrutiny in Judgments of Event Impact

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It's what's inside that counts: The role of counterfactual content in intention formation

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Repetitive Regret, Depression, and Anxiety: Findings from a Nationally Representative Survey

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Beliefs in moral luck: When and why blame hinges on luck.

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Power and Categorization: Power Increases the Number and Abstractness of Categories

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Free Will, Counterfactual Reflection, and the Meaningfulness of Life Events

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A mixed-method analysis of counterfactual thinking, negative event themes, and the transtheoretical model in a community sample of smokers.

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The Role of Counterfactual Thinking on Attitudes Toward ADHD Medication Use.

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An investigation on using serious gaming to study human decision-making in engineering contexts

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If only I wasn't so impulsive: Counterfactual thinking and delay-discounting

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Improving workplace safety by thinking about what might have been: A first look at the role of counterfactual thinking.

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Erratum to manuscript YJESP 3135, Preferences for expressing preferences: People prefer finer evaluative distinctions for liked than disliked objects [J. Exp. Soc. Psychol., 52 (May 2014), 2531]

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Using counterfactual thinking theory to change alcohol protective behavioural strategy use intentions.

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Memory and Counterfactual Simulations for Past Wrongdoings Foster Moral Learning and Improvement.

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Dispositional optimism weakly predicts upward, rather than downward, counterfactual thinking: A prospective correlational study using episodic recall.

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Learning from yesterday's mistakes to fix tomorrow's problems: When functional counterfactual thinking and psychological distance collide

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A Study on Outcome Framing and Risk Attitude in Engineering Decisions Under Uncertainty

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Preferences for expressing preferences: People prefer finer evaluative distinctions for liked than disliked objects

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Grandiose narcissism shapes counterfactual thinking (and regret): Direct and indirect evidence

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Narrowing of attention following food cue exposure in emerging adults: Does impulsivity matter?

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Moving Toward a Brighter Future: The Effects of Desire on Judgments About the Likelihood of Future Events

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The implications of counterfactual mind-sets for the functioning of implementation intentions

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Counterfactual thought in reasoning and performance

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When, Why and How do Functional Counterfactual Thoughts Influence Work-related Outcomes?

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Schizophrenia involves impairment in the activation of intentions by counterfactual thinking.

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Motivational Differences in Seeking Out Evaluative Categorization Information.

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Studying the Sunk Cost Effect in Engineering Decision Making with Serious Gaming

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Do episodic counterfactual thoughts focus on controllable action?: The role of self-initiation

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Predicting Student Intention to Wear a Mask to Avoid Contracting COVID-19

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SERIOUS GAMING FOR DESIGN AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING RESEARCH

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The Spontaneous Counterfactual Inference Task: Misremembering What Might Have Been.

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Understanding the effects of counterfactual thinking with protective behavioral strategies on healthy eating using the COM-B framework.

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Neural differences between internal and external episodic counterfactual thoughts.

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Using a counterfactual-based intervention to change eating intentions: Results from Hispanic and non-Hispanic undergraduate and community samples.

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Linking Normative and Descriptive Research with Serious Gaming

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From if-then to here and now: Using personalized counterfactuals from past negative experiences to reduce future alcohol consequences.

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Serious Gaming for Design and Systems Engineering Research

# researcherOn[].label
EAGER: Foundations for Combining Normative and Behavioral Research Methodologies to Study Systems Engineering

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National Science Foundation - (Arlington, Virginia, United States)

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Principal-Agent Models of Decision Delegation During Systems Design:  Integrating Modeling and Behavioral Approaches

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National Science Foundation - (Arlington, Virginia, United States)

# streetAddress
Texas A&M University; Psychology; 4235 TAMU