thinking

Scenario 1:

Imagine you have a train to catch at 11 AM, and you get stuck in a traffic jam on the way. You reach at 11:30 AM and miss the train. You come to know that the train left on time.

Scenario 2:

Imagine your friend had a different train to catch at 11 AM, he got stuck in the same traffic jam. He reached at 11:30 AM and missed the train. He came to know that the train was 25 minutes late and left at 11:25 AM.

Who will be more sad?

Studies have shown that 95% of the people will answer your friend will be more upset than you, because he just missed the train by 5 minutes. He would curse himself more than you do, and say:

What if I had left just 5 minutes before?

If I had spent 5 minutes less in the shower, I might have caught the train.

If I woke up 5 minutes before, I’d be on my way now.

Whereas, you’d be a little relaxed thinking that, there anyway was no chance at all to reach half an hour back. You’d say to yourself, “Even If I had left 20 mins before, I would not have made it.”

But the fact still remains the same. That the both of you were late, and hence missed the train. So when we analyse something that goes wrong, we paint scenarios like “if only I had…”, depending on the margin we miss it with.

That’s also the same reason why a Silver medalist would be sadder than the one who won Bronze.

This thinking in psychology is called Counterfactual Thinking