Have you ever felt a burning desire to know what might have been, had you chosen a different course of action? That's "counterfactual curiosity" -- the desire to know about possible alternative outcomes -- and it can sometimes cause us pain and regret.
So why have it?
Dr. Lily FitzGibbon helps me understand better.
Lily investigates cognitive, behavioural and emotional responses to uncertain situations, including information seeking, decision making, and counterfactual thinking in children and adults. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading (UK); she's now a lecturer in psychology at the University of Stirling.
This episode first aired on WERA in June 2021; it has been refreshed, April 2023.
More about Lily Fitzgibbon's work: https://sites.google.com/view/lily-fitzgibbon
Our theme and other music are by Sean Balick.
