Ethics - Counterfactual Thinking in Moral Judgment: An Experimental Study

Course overview

This course is based upon material published in Frontiers in Psychology and is available as an open-access article. Counterfactual thinking is thinking about a past that did not happen. This is often the case in if only situations, where we wish something had or had not happened. To make a choice in a more decision-making situation is particularly hard and, therefore, may be often associated with the imagination of a different outcome. The main aim of the present study is to investigate counterfactual thinking in the context of moral reasoning. We used a modified version of Greenes moral dilemmas test, studying both the time needed to provide a counterfactual in the first and third person and the type of given response in context-out of context in a sample of 90 healthy subjects. We found a longer response time for personal vs. impersonal moral dilemmas. This effect was enhanced in the first person perspective, while in the elderly there was an overall slowing of response time. Out of context/omissive responses were more frequent in the case of personal moral dilemmas presented in the first-person version, with females showing a marked increase in this kind of response. These findings suggest that gender and perspective have a critical role in counterfactual thinking in the context of moral reasoning, and may have implications for the understanding of gender related inclinations as well as differences in moral judgment. This course on counterfactual thinking is designed for social workers, professional counselors, psychologists, nurses, and substance abuse counselors, who do clinical work. This course is appropriate for intermediate and advanced level practitioners who wish to develop or increase their knowledge of counterfactual thinking. It may also be useful for licensed clinicians who require clinical continuing education courses for license renewal. The course is based on a journal article which includes research. It contains statistical analysis and data that some clinicians enjoy reading and others do not. A major benefit of reading research-based articles for continuing education is they provide practitioners with the latest findings in their field. Authors: Migliore, Curcio, Mancini and Cappa. Learning Objectives: This course will provide the practitioner with detailed information regarding counterfactual thinking. Specifically, a professional will: Recognize counterfactual thinking Identify the areas of the brain involved in first person and third person counterfactual thinking I can distinguish between personal and impersonal moral dilemmas Citation: Migliore, S. Curcio, G. Mancini, F. and Cappa, S.F. Counterfactual Thinking in Moral Judgment: An Experimental Study. Frontiers in Psychology 20 May 2017.