Editing Counterfactual conditional (section)

===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.