Editing Counterfactual conditional (section)

==Psychology==
People engage in [[counterfactual thinking]] frequently. Experimental evidence indicates that people's thoughts about counterfactual conditionals differ in important ways from their thoughts about indicative conditionals.

===Comprehension===
Participants in experiments were asked to read sentences, including counterfactual conditionals, e.g., "If Mark had left home early, he would have caught the train". Afterwards, they were asked to identify which sentences they had been shown. They often mistakenly believed they had been shown sentences corresponding to the presupposed facts, e.g., "Mark did not leave home early" and "Mark did not catch the train".<ref name="fillenbaum">{{Cite journal |last=Fillenbaum |first=Samuel |date=1974 |title=Information amplified: Memory for counterfactual conditionals |journal=Journal of Experimental Psychology |volume=102 |issue=1 |pages=44–49 |doi=10.1037/h0035693}}</ref> In other experiments, participants were asked to read short stories that contained counterfactual conditionals, e.g., "If there had been roses in the flower shop then there would have been lilies". Later in the story, they read sentences corresponding to the presupposed facts, e.g., "there were no roses and there were no lilies". The counterfactual conditional [[Priming (psychology)|primed]] them to read the sentence corresponding to the presupposed facts very rapidly; no such priming effect occurred for indicative conditionals.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Santamaría |first1=Carlos |last2=Espino |first2=Orlando |last3=Byrne |first3=Ruth M. J. |date=2005 |title=Counterfactual and Semifactual Conditionals Prime Alternative Possibilities |url=http://www.academia.edu/download/49405843/Counterfactual_and_semifactual_condition20161006-14835-7v9cpw.pdf |journal=Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition |volume=31 |issue=5 |pages=1149–1154 |doi=10.1037/0278-7393.31.5.1149|pmid=16248757 }}{{dead link|date=July 2022|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> They spent different amounts of time 'updating' a story that contains a counterfactual conditional compared to one that contains factual information<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=De Vega |first1=Manuel |last2=Urrutia |first2=Mabel |last3=Riffo |first3=Bernardo |s2cid=26161334 |date=2007 |title=Canceling updating in the comprehension of counterfactuals embedded in narratives |url=https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03193611.pdf |journal=Memory & Cognition |volume=35 |issue=6 |pages=1410–1421 |doi=10.3758/BF03193611|pmid=18035637 |doi-access=free }}</ref> and focused on different parts of counterfactual conditionals.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Ferguson |first1=Heather |last2=Sanford |first2=Anthony |date=2008 |title=Anomalies in real and counterfactual worlds: An eye-movement investigation |url=https://kar.kent.ac.uk/23060/1/count_ET_paper_final.pdf |journal=Journal of Memory and Language |volume=58 |issue=3 |pages=609–626 |doi=10.1016/j.jml.2007.06.007}}</ref>

===Reasoning===
{{Main articles|Counterfactual thinking}}
Experiments have compared the inferences people make from counterfactual conditionals and indicative conditionals. Given a counterfactual conditional, e.g., "If there had been a circle on the blackboard then there would have been a triangle", and the subsequent information "in fact there was no triangle", participants make the [[modus tollens]] inference "there was no circle" more often than they do from an indicative conditional.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Byrne |first1=Ruth M. J. |last2=Tasso |first2=Alessandra |year=1999 |title=Deductive reasoning with factual, possible, and counterfactual conditionals |journal=Memory & Cognition |volume=27 |issue=4 |pages=726–740 |doi=10.3758/BF03211565 |pmid=10479830 |doi-access=free|hdl=2262/39510 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> Given the counterfactual conditional and the subsequent information "in fact there was a circle", participants make the [[modus ponens]] inference as often as they do from an indicative conditional.

===Psychological accounts===
[[Ruth M. J. Byrne|Byrne]] argues that people construct [[mental representation]]s that encompass two possibilities when they understand, and reason from, a counterfactual conditional, e.g., "if Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then someone else would have". They envisage the conjecture "Oswald did not shoot Kennedy and someone else did" and they also think about the presupposed facts "Oswald did shoot Kennedy and someone else did not".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Byrne |first=Ruth M. J. |title=The Rational Imagination |year=2005 |isbn=9780262269629 |doi=10.7551/mitpress/5756.001.0001}}</ref> According to the [[mental model theory of reasoning]], they construct [[mental models]] of the alternative possibilities.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Johnson-Laird |first1=Philip Nicholas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZQPFQgAACAAJ |title=Deduction. |last2=Byrne |first2=Ruth M. J. |year=1991 |publisher=Erlbaum |isbn=9780863771491}}</ref>