The Counterfactual and Prefactual Thinking Scale (CAPS): A New Way of Measuring the Tendency to Reflect on Past and Future Events

Counterfactual thinking about how past events might have been different, and prefactual thinking about how things might be different in future, contribute to judgements, emotions and decisions, and can impact mood and wellbeing. We will develop a new objective psychometric measure, the Counterfactual and Prefactual thinking Scale (CAPS). The CAPS will measure counterfactual and prefactual thinking tendency in terms of perceived controllability and the direction of outcome (upward thoughts of how things might be better and downward thoughts about how things might be worse).

We will conduct two studies to describe and validate the Counterfactual and Prefactual thinking Scale (CAPS). Study 1, the questionnaire development, will consist of an item generation phase followed by item selection phase. In Study 2, we test the construct validity of the CAPS by examining the relationship between subscale scores and three factors which are well-documented correlates of counterfactual thinking, depression, anxiety and regret; and also hope, in which thinking to the future is clearly implicated. We will also examine the relationship between counterfactual and prefactual thinking, as measured by the CAPS, and a range of cognitive-emotional strategies involved in coping with life events.