COVID-19 death toll predictions show that triggering counterfactual thinking deteriorates judgmental performance
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Effective communication during a health crisis is critical as it directly influences psychological and behavioral responses that will shape the further progression of the crisis. Past research has suggested that one type of cognitive mechanism that is likely to be affected by the framing of public health messages relates to counterfactual thinking. Based on 6731 incentivized daily forecasts collected over 377 days (from April 2020–May 2021), we investigate the role of triggering counterfactual thinking when interpreting public information regarding the daily US death toll from COVID-19. Here we show that individuals who engaged in thinking about “interventions that could have led to an alternative evolution of the death toll” prior to making forecasts exhibit greater judgmental bias in their predictions compared to the control group. Specifically, subjects in the treatment group tend to generate upward counterfactuals and underestimate the death toll, potentially due to anchoring on more favorable scenarios and insensitivity to trend changes. Interestingly, this behavior is also observed among individuals who had recovered from COVID-19 (or someone in their close social circle). Our findings underscore the importance of using debiasing strategies and neutral communication during health crises to mitigate the generation of upward counterfactuals, thus reducing the likelihood of systematic misperceptions and flawed decision-making. How information is provided to the public about health can impact the interpretation by the public and how they behave. Counterfactual thinking occurs when people construct mental representations of alternatives to the past. Over the period of one year, we collected daily predictions from a sample of 6731 US citizens to study how triggering counterfactual thinking influences judgmental predictions regarding the US death toll caused by COVID-19. We find that counterfactual thinking substantially worsens predictive accuracy and propose strategies for improving the effectiveness of crisis communication to avoid counterfactual thinking occurring. Seifert and Somasundaram collect 6731 daily forecasts over 377 days to investigate the role of triggering counterfactual thinking when interpreting public information regarding the daily US death toll from COVID-19. They find that counterfactual thinking leads to greater judgmental forecasting biases.
Source: Communications Medicine
Authors: Matthias Seifert, Jeeva Somasundaram
Institution: IE University
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,690
OpenAlex ID: W4407136314