2min chapter

The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos cover image

Why Living Without Regret is a Bad Idea

The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

CHAPTER

The Two Kinds of Counterfactual Thinking

There are two kinds of counterfactual thinking. One is known as a downward counterfactual, where we imagine how things could have been worse. The other is called upward counterfactuals, and they make us feel like crap. Researchers looked at how often we use each of these two kinds ofcounterfactuals. They found that those painful, if only, counterfactual's beat out the nicer feeling more than 80% of the time.

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