In a way, it seems like there's no point wondering what could have been — if you hadn't screwed up that job interview, if you'd worked up the nerve to text that girl, if you'd trusted your gut a ...

Last weekend, we hosted a large party to celebrate a big family birthday. Ever the optimists, we assumed that spring weather would be on our side. We invited 60 guests to join outdoor celebrations in ...

What if the great events in history had turned out differently? How would the world today be changed? Niall Ferguson wonders about this a lot. He's a well-known economic historian at Harvard, and a ...

Have you ever been in that meeting where things goes awry and you immediately feel your stomach tie up in knots? You can tell something is wrong–maybe what you said or didn’t say, or did or didn’t do.

Counterfactual thinking -- considering a "turning point" moment in the past and alternate universes had it not occurred -- heightens one's perception of the moment as significant, and even fated, ...

It took you three weeks to gather the nerve to ask your boss for a raise–and three seconds for her to respond with a firm "no." For days afterwards you ponder what went wrong: "If only I had been more ...

July 1, 2013 Add as a preferred source on Google Add as a preferred source on Google , when one of the main characters makes a game of the phenomenon, asking his roommate: “In a world where ...

COUNTERFACTUAL thinking is a psychological concept involving our human tendency to create possible alternatives to life events that have already happened. These are our "what-if's" thoughts. Upward ...

Fu’s Internet fame is reminiscent of the Summer Olympic Games in London in 2012, when gymnast McKayla Maroney’s reaction to winning the silver medal in the vault became an online sensation; however, ...