Counterfactual thinking is imagining how things could have gone differently. Bronze medalists feel happy thinking about fourth place, while silver medalists feel regret imagining gold. That discomfort is a feature, not a bug: evolution wired us to feel worse so we'd improve next time.
There's some interesting evidence from the Olympics. If you show people photographs of Olympic medalists on the medal stand without showing them the medals they received themselves, what you'll find is that gold medalists look really happy. Not surprising. However, you know who else looks really happy? Bronze medalists. Bronze medalists are usually beaming. Silver medalists? They often don't look so happy, even though they finished second in the world. And it's all about counterfactual thinking. The bronze medalist is doing what's called a downward counterfactual, imagining how things could have been worse. So she says, well, at least I didn't finish in 4th place like that schmo over there who's going home without any medal at all. The silver medalist does what's called an upward counterfactual. She imagines how things could have been better. Ah, if only I had pedaled a little bit harder, if only I had taken that turn a little bit faster, I would be a gold medalist. Here's the thing: regret is an upward counterfactual. It begins with if only. If only blah-biddy blah-biddy blah. At least make us feel better. But they don't make us do better. If-onlys make us do better— make us feel worse, and they help us do better. They make us do better by making us feel worse. We're much more likely to do counterfactual thinking that makes us feel worse than feel better. Why? Because we are programmed for survival, and regret is part of our cognitive machinery. By imagining how things could have been better and dealing with a little bit of that pain, we improve in the future. That's how we learn. It's how we grow.
