182 Book Reviews

Schacter concludes the book with a look at aging and memory, focussing specifically on the
role of changes in the frontal lobes. Schacter argues that such changes account for elderly
patients' specific difficulty with source memories: recalling the source of information they
remember.
All in all, Schacter's book is quite an effective one, on several levels. Students interested in
cognitive psychology or neuropsychology will definitely enjoy, and learn much, from reading
this book. So will general readers. Research psychologists can benefit from seeing such a well-
crafted work that explains technical research in a fascinating and accessible way.

KATHLEEN GALOTTI
Carleton College

Water under the bridge: psychological dams and diversions

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN: THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF COUNTERFACTUAL

THINKING. Neal J. Roese and James M. Olson (Eds). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
Mahwah, New Jersey. No. of pages 408. ISBN 0-8058-1614-5. Price US $89.95 (hard cover).

Phrases such as `crying over spilt milk', `burning your bridges' and `water under the bridge'
illustrate the common tendency to consider how things might have turned out differently.
Counterfactual thinking is the process of generating and considering these alternate realities.
Despite a long tradition of research on counterfactuals from philosophical and linguistic
perspectives, the psychological treatment of the subject is relatively new. This book addresses
the emerging psychological interest in the subject, and aims to provide a reference that
simultaneously reviews past developments and charts new directions. Although the book's
coverage of the field is limited to the domain of social cognition, with little attempt to link to
the cognitive or philosophical literatures, the chapters are nonetheless eclectic, covering a
variety of perspectives, paradigms, and epistemological approaches.
One of the book's central themes is the role of causal attribution in counterfactual thinking.
Seelau, Seelau, Wells and Windschitl (Chapter 2) focus on which events in a causal sequence
are mutated, or changed, in the counterfactual world. For example, people are more likely to
construct the counterfactual alternative `if only the pilot had been more alert, then the plane
would not have crashed', than `if only there was no gravity, then the plane would not have
crashed', even though both may be true assertions. Several other authors point out that
because the processes underlying causal attributions are often based on imperfect heuristics,
one may end up with erroneous counterfactual models. These, in turn, may lead to needlessly
`kicking oneself' and making unnecessary changes in behaviour (Sherman and McConnell,
Chapter 7) or, as Miller and Taylor (Chapter 11) argue, may underlie certain types of
superstitious beliefs (e.g., that an intentionally walked batter is more likely to score than one
that is accidentally walked). In contrast, McGill and Klein (Chapter 12) offer the interesting
hypothesis that under-use of counterfactual thinking may have its pitfalls also, and be
implicated in some forms of gender bias.
Several chapters focus on affective consequencs of counterfactual thinking, especially
satisfaction and regret. Dunning and Madey (Chapter 4) and Gilovich and Medvec (Chapter
9) discuss framing effects, arguing that the consequences of counterfactual thinking may differ
as a function of the alternative that is chosen for comparison. For example, Gilovich and
Medvec demonstrated that an objectively worse outcome, namely winning a bronze as
opposed to a silver medal at the Olympics, can produce higher feelings of satisfaction. They
argue that silver medalists may compare their outcome to a world in which they won the gold
medal, and feel disappointed, whereas bronze medalists have as a reference a world in which
they won no medal, and thus feel relatively more satisfied.
In contrast, Gleicher and colleagues (Gleicher, Boninger, Strathman, Armor, Hetts and
Ahn, Chapter 10) look at anticipated regret and offer some applications of their analysis for
 Book Reviews 183

AIDS prevention among young people. Yet another perspective on the topic was offered by
authors who addressed the functions of counterfactual thinking, and attempted to determine
what purpose is served by ruminating over events that cannot be changed. McMullen,
Markman and Gavanski (Chapter 5) discuss how counterfactual thinking may contribute to a
sense of control; Roese and Olson (Chapter 6) discuss the role of counterfactual thinking in
preparing for future situations, and Davis and Lehman (Chapter 13) propose that
counterfactual thinking may help to make sense of tragic events.
Two chapters address possible individual differences in counterfactual thinking, albeit from
radically different perspectives. Kasmatis and Wells (Chapter 3) examine the relation of
counterfactual thinking to traditional personality constructs, such as optimism and self-
esteem. In contrast, Landman (Chapter 8) offers an analysis grounded in literary traditions.
She argues that broad world views, corresponding roughly to the literary categories of
romance, comedy, tragedy and irony, may form a relatively stable part of a person's outlook,
and may interact with both counterfactual attributions and the resulting regret.
However, perhaps the most interesting findings to emerge from this book concern the
potential discrepancy between results obtained in the laboratory, and those derived from field
studies. For example, laboratory studies reliably indicate that in constructing counterfactual
alternatives, people are more likely to change extraordinary, rather than mundane events, and
to feel more regret over acts of commission than omission. In contrast, field work by Davis
and Lehman (Chapter 13) showed that when faced with a tragic loss, people are just as likely
to mutate mundane as extraordinary events, and Gilovich and Medvec (Chapter 9)
demonstrated that, when reminiscing about their lives, people are likely to regret the things
they haven't done more than the things they have done. In addition, Davis and Lehman were
able to demonstrate that contrary to accepted wisdom, counterfactual thinking may be
separate from causal attribution. For example, parents who have lost a child to crib death may
acknowledge that they did not cause the child to die, and yet construct counterfactual
alternatives in which their actions may have prevented the death from occurring (e.g., if only I
had looked in more often . . . ). In his summary remarks, Kahneman (Chapter 14) offers some
interesting hypotheses on how these apparent discrepancies may be resolved.
In overview, this is a technical but readable book that is likely to serve as a useful reference
for researchers in a variety of areas. Scholars interested in causal attributions, motivation,
judgement and decision making, and reasoning, whether from a social psychological,
cognitive, philosophical, or linguistic perspective, are all likely to find at least one of these
chapters to be informative. Moreover, its utility for scholars outside the domain is greatly
enhanced by the first (Roese and Olson) and last (Kahneman) chapters. Roese and Olson's
introduction provides the reader with sufficient background to make sense of the chapters that
follow, and to place them in context, and Kahneman's concluding remarks provide a good
summary of the issues raised in the intervening chapters, and sets out some interesting
questions for future work.

VALERIE A. THOMPSON
University of Saskatchewan, Canada

A not so new look at the psychology of gender

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENDER. Anne E. Beall and Robert J. Sternberg (Eds). Guilford
Press, New York, 1993.

Ellen Berscheid begins her foreword to this book with the statement, `I wish I could say I have
a completely dispassionate and solely scholarly interest in the questions addressed in this
book' (p. vii). Although Berscheid cannot endorse a disinterested approach, her wish to do so
hints at nostalgia for the good old pre-feminist days when psychologists engaged in research
on gender could (and felt they should) maintain an `aerial distance', in Martin's (1996) phrase,