Effect of depression and victimization on counterfactual thinking

Abstract

Imagination allows us to think abstractly, plan future actions, impossible to live experiences lived in the real world and reframe situations or feelings. The imaginative process can include anything from training images, but also refer to fantasies, creativity and mental activities planning courses of action and development of alternatives to reality. In the latter case, people would think of as an event if circumstances were different, which corresponds to the idea of counterfactual thinking. This study seeks to compare counterfactual thoughts of depressed and non-depressed people, people who are victims of domestic violence and not victimized as well as depressive and victimized, in order to ascertain whether there are differences in the way they seek alternatives to reality. The sample of participants will consist of two other groups: one group of 40 adults of both genders, 20 with a diagnosis of depression and 20 without a diagnosis of depression, and the second group of 40 other participants, adult females, the which 20 have experienced domestic violence and 20 have not gone through this experience. Data collection will be done individually, through the presentation of five stories that should be modified. Such stories have been analyzed in the previous study, in terms of their suitability for five judges. The changes are made by the participants reporting free and then, by choosing alternatives previously developed. The free reports will be assessed by the technique of content analysis, and the frequency of participants' responses from the reports, and the alternatives they noted, are compared by the Student t test and the ANOVA. (AU)