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Abstract

Three studies examined the conditions under which people engage in anticipatory construal before an evaluative event versus reconstrual after the event. Computer software informed college students that there was a 1.5%, 12%, 88%, or 98.5% chance that an opposite-sex student would pick them for a hypothetical date. When people had extreme expectations (1.5% or 98.5%), they changed their view of the student to be consistent with their expectations before learning the outcome (anticipatory reconstrual). When people had moderate expectations (12% or 88%), they formed relatively unbiased impressions beforehand but reconstrued after learning the outcome of the dating game (postevent reconstrual). Either strategy can ameliorate the pain of a negative event in ways that people do not anticipate. Forecasters predicted that losing would make them feel worse than it did and selected a higher dose of a drug to cope with an anticipated loss than did people who actually lost.

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When to Fire: Anticipatory Versus Postevent Reconstrual of Uncontrollable Events

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