People's political views predict which alternatives to reality they will find most plausible, will be most likely to spontaneously imagine, and will view as sufficient evidence of a conclusion

Polarized imagination: partisanship influences the direction and consequences of counterfactual thinking. Kai Epstude, Daniel A. Effron and Neal J. Roese. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. October 31 2022. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0342

Abstract: Four studies examine how political partisanship qualifies previously documented regularities in people's counterfactual thinking (n = 1186 Democrats and Republicans). First, whereas prior work finds that people generally prefer to think about how things could have been better instead of worse (i.e. entertain counterfactuals in an upward versus downward direction), studies 1a–2 find that partisans are more likely to generate and endorse counterfactuals in whichever direction best aligns with their political views. Second, previous research finds that the closer someone comes to causing a negative event, the more blame that person receives; study 3 finds that this effect is more pronounced among partisans who oppose (versus support) a leader who ‘almost' caused a negative event. Thus, partisan reasoning may influence which alternatives to reality people will find most plausible, will be most likely to imagine spontaneously, and will view as sufficient grounds for blame.

5. General discussion

Our four studies shed new light on how partisan beliefs relate to counterfactual thinking. Partisans find a given counterfactual more plausible when it aligns with their views (studies 1a and 1b), selectively generate counterfactuals that align with their views (study 2), and deploy counterfactuals that support preferred moral judgements about leaders (study 3). In summary, partisanship predicts both the content and the conclusions of counterfactual thoughts.

Our research makes several theoretical contributions. Our main contribution is to demonstrate how partisanship qualifies two empirical regularities in the counterfactual thinking literature. First, whereas previous research demonstrated an overwhelming preference for upward over downward counterfactuals (e.g. [31]), studies 1a–2 found a complete reversal of this preference when downward counterfactuals aligned with participants' views. That is, partisans in our studies flexibly generated and endorsed counterfactuals in whichever direction best aligned with their political views on a particular issue (supporting H1a over H1b). One explanation is that prior research tended to examine situations in which people were motivated by a desire to discover ‘how things could be better,' whereas partisans tend to be more motivated by a desire to justify and defend their political views.

The second empirical regularity we qualify is that the closer someone comes to causing a negative event, the more blame that person receives (e.g. [19]). Study 3 replicated this effect, but also showed that it is more pronounced among partisans who oppose (versus support) a leader who ‘almost' caused a negative event (supporting H2). One explanation is that when people dislike a leader, they lower their standards for what constitutes evidence of that leader's blameworthiness, giving more weight to imagined events—what could have happened under the leader's watch.

In short, partisan reasoning may influence which alternatives to reality people will find most plausible, will be most likely to spontaneously imagine, and will view as sufficient grounds for blame—thus creating important boundary conditions on previously documented effects.

Another theoretical contribution is that study 3 advances understanding of counterfactual thinking's role in moral judgement [32]. In some cases, downward counterfactual thinking connects to more-lenient moral judgements [33]—a contrast effect. For example, participants felt licensed to act in a less-than-virtuous manner after they reflected on the sinful actions they could have (but did not) performed [25,26]. In other cases, downward counterfactual thinking results in harsher moral judgements [34]—an assimilation effect. Study 3 suggests that the extent to which downward counterfactual thinking produces harsher moral judgements depends on partisanship. When partisans disliked a president, downward counterfactual thinking was more tightly associated with blaming that president. That is, the closer people thought a negative event came to occurring, the more likely they were to blame the president, especially if the president was opposed by the partisan. Our findings thus raise the possibility that motivation influences how much of an assimilation effect result from downward counterfactual thinking. Future research should further examine this possibility.

Third, our results contribute to a debate about whether conservatives are more prone to cognitive biases than are liberals (cf. [1,35,36]). Our results suggest that partisanship connects to counterfactual thinking among people at both ends of the political spectrum (i.e. Democrats and Republicans). That said, our results contain nuance. In studies 1a–2, Democrats and Republicans alike were more inclined to endorse and generate counterfactuals that were aligned (versus misaligned) with their views—but this effect was larger among Democrats. In study 3, people's tendency to blame a president they opposed for negative events that nearly happened was larger among Trump supporters than Biden supporters—but participants' tendency to praise a president they supported for having averted negative events was larger among Biden than Trump supporters. Future research should assess the generality of these patterns and pinpoint why they emerge. However, our results do not support the possibility that, when it comes to counterfactual thinking, conservatives show more partisan bias than do liberals.

As noted, our results are consistent with the idea that partisans engage in motivated counterfactual thinking. That is, the content and conclusions of their counterfactual thinking may reflect their desire to justify their political beliefs and to blame leaders they oppose. However, like most partisan effects in political psychology [16], ours could also be explained by non-motivated processes. For example, Republicans could be more likely than Democrats to think that ‘things would have been better’ without a particular Democratic policy because Republicans have been exposed to more information about that policy's shortcomings. Meanwhile, Democrats could be more likely than Republicans to blame Trump for ‘almost' causing war with North Korea because only Democrats are more likely to have the prior that Trump makes bad decisions. Of course, the priors and indeed the information to which partisans have been exposed may themselves have motivated origins, which illustrates the challenge of distinguishing motivated from purely cognitive processes [17]. In practice, both types of processes may work together [37].