The Lure of Counterfactual Curiosity: People Incur a Cost to Experience Regret

After you make a decision, it is sometimes possible to seek information about how things would be if you had acted otherwise. We investigated the lure of this counterfactual information, namely, counterfactual curiosity. In a set of five experiments (total N = 150 adults), we used an adapted Balloon Analogue Risk Task with varying costs of information. At a cost, people were willing to seek information about how much they could have won, even though it had little utility and a negative emotional impact (i.e., it led to regret). We explored the downstream effects of seeking information on emotion, behavior adjustment, and ongoing performance, showing that it has little or even negative performance benefit. We also replicated the findings with a large-sample ( N = 361 adults) preregistered experiment that excluded possible alternative explanations. This suggests that information about counterfactual alternatives has a strong motivational lure—people simply cannot help seeking it.

Spatial-Temporal Response Patterns of Tourist Flow under Real-Time Tourist Flow Diversion Scheme

This paper excavates tourist decision-making mechanism under the real-time tourist flow diversion scheme (RTFDS) and evaluates the tourist flow diversion effect of RTFDS. To meet the objectives, the stated preference survey and tourist flow survey of the Summer Palace were implemented. The tourist behavior adjustment model and tourist flow diversion simulation model were established. The results show that: (a) For core tourist spots, 66.5% and 16.5% of tourists will choose “behavior adjustment” and “no longer adjustment” under RTFDS, these behavior adjustments all shorten tourists’ residence time in tourist spots; (b) When the tourist congestion perception degree equals 4 or 5, tourists tend to adopt behavior adjustment or the individuals adopt no longer adjustment instead of cognitive adjustment when they face low tourist congestion perception degree, which equals 1 or 2; (c) When core tourist spots’ residence time is reduced by 10% and 20%, there are 60% and 73% time nodes where core tourist spots’ tourist flow density is less than or equal to the condition of null information, there are 73% and 60% time nodes where periphery tourist spots’ density is more than the condition of null information. The simulation results showed that some tourists could be guided from core tourist spots to periphery tourist spots through releasing RTFDS information. The research can provide theoretical support for the implementation of RTFDS, and alleviate the congestion inside the tourist attraction.

The Lure of Counterfactual Curiosity: People Incur a Cost to Experience Regret

After making a decision, it is sometimes possible to seek information about how things would be if one had acted otherwise. We investigated the lure of this counterfactual information, namely counterfactual curiosity. In a set of five experiments (total N = 150) we used an adapted Balloon Analogue Risk Task with varying costs of information. People were willing to seek information about how much they could have won, at a cost, and even though it had little utility and a negative emotional impact (i.e. it led to regret). We explore the downstream effects of seeking information on emotion, behavior adjustment, and ongoing performance, showing that it has little or even negative performance benefit. We also replicated the findings with a large-sample (N = 361) preregistered experiment that excluded possible alternative explanations. This suggests that information about counterfactual alternatives has a strong motivational lure – people simply cannot help seeking it.

The Issue of Aversion in Lifestyle Treatments

Increasing evidence suggests that vigorous physical activity (PA) is more beneficial than moderate PA for reducing adiposity and improving bone health in youth. However, beginning a vigorous PA program is not an easy behavior adjustment and the change is likely to be aversive for some individuals. In order to benefit from vigorous PA, health care providers need to help individuals increase self-efficacy.