Motivated Counterfactual Thinking and Moral Inconsistency: How We Use Our Imaginations to Selectively Condemn and Condone
Daniel A. Effron,
Kai Epstude,
Neal J. Roese
Abstract:People selectively enforce their moral principles, excusing wrongdoing when it suits them. We identify an underappreciated source of this moral inconsistency: the ability to imagine counterfactuals, or alternatives to reality. Counterfactual thinking offers three sources of flexibility that people exploit to justify preferred moral conclusions: People can (a) generate counterfactuals with different content (e.g., consider how things could have been better or worse), (b) think about this content using different… Show more
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