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The Effects Of Counterfactual Thinking On Everyday Meaning, Wynn Tan May 2022

The Effects Of Counterfactual Thinking On Everyday Meaning, Wynn Tan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Meaning-making literature largely focuses on predictors of global meaning rather than situational meaning. This is insufficient as both levels of meaning are necessary for a sustained sense of meaning. Past studies found evidence that downward counterfactuals can enhance the meaningfulness of events. However, those findings may be due to existing studies’ focus on major events and did not study how meaning could change over time. For everyday events, upward counterfactuals were proposed to be more apt in enhancing meaning. Using a multiphase diary study, this paper examined whether upward counterfactual thinking predicted event meaningfulness, and more specifically if it was …


Maintaining Faith In Agency Under Immutable Constraints: Cognitive Consequences Of Believing In Negotiable Fate, Evelyn Wing-Mun Au, Chi-Yue Chiu, Avinish Chaturvedi, Leeann Mallorie, Madhu Viswanathan, Zhi Xue, Krishna Savani Jan 2011

Maintaining Faith In Agency Under Immutable Constraints: Cognitive Consequences Of Believing In Negotiable Fate, Evelyn Wing-Mun Au, Chi-Yue Chiu, Avinish Chaturvedi, Leeann Mallorie, Madhu Viswanathan, Zhi Xue, Krishna Savani

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Negotiable fate refers to the idea that one can negotiate with fate for control, and that people can exercise personal agency within the limits that fate has determined. Research on negotiable fate has found greater prevalence of related beliefs in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Eastern Europe than in Western Europe and English-speaking countries. The present research extends previous findings by exploring the cognitive consequences of the belief in negotiable fate. It was hypothesized that this belief enables individuals to maintain faith in the potency of their personal actions and to remain optimistic in their goal pursuits despite the immutable …


Social Comparison During Political Transition: Interaction Of Entity Versus Incremental Beliefs And Social Identities, Ying-Yi Hong, Chi-Yue Chiu, Grace Yeung, Jennifer Y. Y. Tong Mar 1999

Social Comparison During Political Transition: Interaction Of Entity Versus Incremental Beliefs And Social Identities, Ying-Yi Hong, Chi-Yue Chiu, Grace Yeung, Jennifer Y. Y. Tong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The relation between intergroup perceptions and peoples implicit theories of the malleability of human attributes or character was examined. We predicted that people who believe that human attributes are fixed (entity theorists) may also view a group as an entity and thus would rely on trait-based dimensions in social comparison to achieve group distinctiveness. By contrast, people who believe that human attributes are malleable (incremental theorists) may focus on the dynamic aspects of social groups (e.g., group goals) and thus would be less likely to rely on trait-based dimensions in social comparison. Moreover, such differential tendency was expected to become …