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Dreaming, Vol. 10, No. 4, 2000
Counterfactual Thought in Dreams Patrick McNamara1,2
Counterfactual cognitive simulations are considerations of what might have been if what actually happened could be undone. I hypothesize that counterfactual thought is characteristic of dreams and that cognitive operations in dreams function to identify a norm violation recorded in autobiographical memory and then to re-instate normality in memory by generating counterfactuals to the violation. Dream counterfactuals therefore obey the same constraints on mutability as waking counterfactuals. Both dreaming and counterfactuals typically focus on the self, involve negative affect, and narrative form, promote problem solving and learning by running mental simulations and variations on a given problem theme, employ memory fragments in these various mental scenarios, plausibly rely on neural networks in right limbic and orbitofrontal cortices, and are largely automatic and pre-conscious operations. KEY WORDS: dream content; cognition; norm violations; autobiographical memory.
INTRODUCTION What type of cognitive activity occurs in dreams? The answer to this question is vitally important for dream research. If we knew, for example, that planning-related cognitions around ‘current concerns’ were the most frequently reported type of cognitive activity that occurs in dreams then we would be justified in exploring the possibility that the function of dreaming had something to do with planning or problem solving. Or if we found that no single type of cognitive activity predominated in dreams and instead that the content of dreams was typically bizarre and random, then dreaming would probably have no important or discernible cognitive function. Finally, if mental states associated with dreaming enacted the same variety of cognitive phenomena as occurs in waking life, then we might conclude that dream cognition is basically no different from waking cognition and that dreaming functioned to satisfy the same constraints and the same goals as waking cognitions. Several hypotheses concerning the nature of dream cognition have been proposed. Freud (1900, 1953) suggested that dream cognitions were composed of memory fragments that are combined in such a way as to encode libidinal desires of the dreamer. Foulkes (1985) 1 Assistant
Professor, Department of Neurology and Behavioral Neurosciences, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts and Department of Neurology, VA New England Health Care. 2 Correspondence should be directed to Patrick McNamara, Ph.D., Department of Neurology, VA New England Healthcare System, 150 S. Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02130; e-mail:
[email protected]. 237 C 2000 Association for the Study of Dreams 1053-0797/00/1200-0237$18.00/1 °
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argued that dreams were ‘credible world analogs’ or imaginative simulations of waking life that obeyed fundamental rules of waking cognition but that to a great extent lacked reflective thought. Rechtschaffen (1978) emphasized the single-mindedness quality of the thought that occurs in dreams. We do not usually entertain two thoughts at once during a dream and we usually naively and unreflectively accept whatever occurs in the dream action as real. Reviewing quantitative studies of dream content across a wide variety of populations, Domhoff (1996) found that dream reports were typically fairly representative of waking thoughts and concerns of the dreamer. States (1997) has focused on the narrative form most dream reports take and reasonably supposes that these stories are not just attributable to daytime reporting strategies of the dreamers. Several authors have commented on the occurrence of metaphor and the symbolic nature of dreaming (see for example Lakoff, 1993). These investigators believe that dreams prefer a kind of condensed pictorial language to convey meanings, particularly emotional meanings. Strauch and Meier (1996) reported that most dreams contain non-normal or unfamiliar background settings and that half of the dream reports in their sample contained people who were unknown to the dreamer (strangers). When aggressive interactions occurred in the dream the dreamer was usually the victim. Hartmann (1996) has suggested that dreams are the product of spreading excitation between semantic nodes in a semantic network except that the patterns of activation in dreams are guided by current emotional concerns and make connections more broadly and more inclusively than does waking cognition. I would like to suggest that dreaming typically involves the activation and processing of counterfactuals. Counterfactual outcomes are outcomes that might have or could have happened but did not. They are mental simulations or analogue models of alternative outcomes to what actually occurred. These analogue-modeling strategies may be the source of much of the pictorial feel or visual nature of dream content. Counterfactual simulations are considerations of what might have been if what actually happened could be undone. There is now abundant evidence, gathered mostly by social psychologists, which suggests that counterfactual thinking is a normal part of the cognitive repertoire of every human being (see papers in Roese and Olson, 1996; and Byrne, 1997; Roese, 1997). Following a given outcome, particularly negative outcomes, we typically engage in imagining an alternative to the outcome. We then cognitively generate simulations of imaginative scenarios that would allow or promote the alternative outcome. We do this typically by changing or mutating various causal antecedents of the outcome. We next compare the simulations of what might have been to what actually happened in an attempt to restore the unwanted outcome to a more normative routine outcome. This may be construed as a kind of tension reduction exercise in which we attempt to reduce the discrepancy between what is actual and what is desired. To the extent that the comparison process reveals that the counterfactual alternatives seem plausible or possible as compared to what actually happened we feel tension, distress or discomfort and are therefore motivated to try to right the situation. By engaging in these counterfactual simulations we learn how to avoid negative outcomes in the future or we learn how to strive more effectively for current desired outcomes. Thus counterfactual thinking is an important part of the learning process. There are a number of striking processing similarities between dreaming and counterfactual thinking (see Table). Both dreaming and counterfactuals typically focus on the self, involve negative affect, and narrative form, promote problem solving and learning by running mental simulations and variations on a given problem theme, employ memory
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Counterfactuals
Dream Reports
Activated typically by negative affect Fundamental to causal and to narrative thought Involve mental simulations typically about past events Probably involves right orbitofrontal frontal cortex Content typically focuses on abnormal, extreme or unusual events in an effort to reinstate normality Automatic and largely unconscious Promotes problem solving and learning through linked causal-inference effects often focuses on the self
Typically involve negative affect Typically involve narrative form Typically employ memory fragments in various mental scenarios Probably involves right limbic and orbitofrontal cortices Content typically focuses on abnormal or unusual events—sometimes bizarre events Automatic and largely pre-conscious Promotes problem solving and learning through unknown mechanisms typically focuses on the self
fragments in these various mental scenarios, plausibly rely on neural networks in right limbic and orbitofrontal cortices, and are at least partially automatic and pre-conscious operations. I briefly review each of these processing characteristics below. Negative Affect Both dreams and counterfactuals frequently involve activation of negative affect. Negative affect is a potent activator of counterfactual thinking (Roese, 1997) and hundreds of dream content studies have repeatedly shown that disproportionately high numbers of dreams involve negative affect (Domhoff, 1996, p. 330). It seems plausible to suppose that if negative affect normally activates counterfactual thinking during waking life it may also do so during the dream state. Both dreaming and counterfactual thought can produce negative affect, as well, through contrast-effects. Downward counterfactuals, mental simulations that entertain a situation that is worse than what actually happened (e.g. “If I had not been wearing my seatbelt I may have been more seriously injured.”) are generally associated with positive mood while upward counterfactuals (comparing to a better reality than what in fact happened—“If only I had worn a seatbelt I would not have been so injured.”) are generally associated with negative affect. Interestingly, people who have experienced identical negative outcomes feel worse if they can generate upward counterfactuals more readily. Medevec, Madey and Gilovich (1995) created two master tapes from TV coverage of the 1992 summer Olympics. One tape portrayed the reactions of all bronze and silver medalists at the time they had learned of their win. The second tape showed athletes as they stood on the medal stand during the award ceremony. Twenty students watched these videotapes without sound and rated the athletes apparent happiness. Winners of bronze medals were rated as happier than winners of silver medals. Analysis of the medalists responses in televised interviews revealed that silver medalists were more likely than bronze medalists to voice the counterfactual thought that they had almost won the gold. People who are objectively better off than others who had not performed as well can nevertheless feel worse than the poorer performers because they are tormented by the counterfactual thought concerning the better result they had come close to achieving.
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Focus on the Self Both dreams and counterfactuals primarily focus on the self. This pervasive focus on the self may be related to a version of the so-called fundamental error of attribution: people generally blame themselves when something goes wrong or credit themselves when something goes right. The focus on self in turn may be dependent on the fact that selfinitiated actions are more mutable than other initiated actions. Controllable outcomes may be particularly mutable because it is easy to imagine that the person might have chosen and could have chosen to behave otherwise. People, for example, who have lost a relative in an auto accident caused by a drunken driver report engaging in counterfactual thoughts that mentally undo the outcome (Davis and Lehman, 1995). They mostly imagine what they or their relative could have done differently. They do not, however, spontaneously report that they engaged in thoughts that mentally removed the drunken driver. The fact that there are drunken drivers is beyond their control. Perpetrators of crimes are often construed to be part of the immutable background of the crime and thus people do not mentally ‘undo’ that aspect of the crime. In other words they concentrate on what they could have done differently as that is the only variable that appears to be under their control- and so counterfactuals and dreams focus on the self and its efforts to reinstate normality. Narrative Form Another point of commonality between counterfactuals and dreams is that both are linked to narrative forms of thought. Rosch (1996), for example has pointed out that counterfactual thought is fundamental to causal and to narrative thought. Narratives or stories are usually concerned with surprising or unusual events made notable because they violate some aspect of the background routines and scripts of everyday life. Standard narrative, stories, folktales and myths are very often about some deviation from some social norm of everyday life. The stories undo some salient attribute of one of these normative narratives of everyday life. “Little Red Riding Hood,” for example, decides to take the left path rather than the right path in her weekly walk to grandmother’s house and this decision leads to a whole series of adventures that otherwise would not have happened if the child had kept to the right path. As with counterfactual thinking the entire fable then chronicles attempts by the heroine to return home—to reestablish normality. In some dreams one can actually see the dreamer repeatedly generate a counterfactual scenario along with attempts to return to normal routines typically associated with the setting or situation depicted in the dream. This repeated generation of counterfactual alternatives to the dream theme or dream setting results in a story line or narrative format wherein the dreamer attempts to right or undo the abnormal situation. Take, for example, the following dream of a 25-year-old on the 4th night of a laboratory study of dreaming. The dream report is from Strauch and Meier, (1996) and occurred in the second phase of REM. I am in a major American city where there is a baptism of a rocket for a manned moon capsule. People have come from all over the world and expect something sensational to happen. My sister and Suzanne and I have been invited. Everything took place at a harbor and there was some kind of breakdown at the start and the rocket took off ten or maybe a hundred meters beyond the ramp, and then simply fell back down. And we wondered what might have happened if it had toppled over—just plunged into the water or if it had lifted 200 meters into the air and maybe flipped over and then fallen into the water. If it had gone as high as one kilometer it might have fallen into the city and on top of a skyscraper. And then we fantasized whether the rocket might be propelled by
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the strength of a statesmen—Giscard Estaing was there too—and thrown upwards like that, which would certainly have caused a debacle. And that was what happened. Several people representing all kinds of nations grabbed the rocket at its bottom, lifted it up and tried to propel it skyward. And the rocket did fly for about one hundred meters, twisted and returned toward the water and everything was tried to save it. And they succeeded once more in putting the rocket into orbit. Finally it did fall into the water. All this time we took photographs from all kinds of perspectives.
The dreamer starts by announcing the setting or situation that will be subjected to counterfactual analysis: there was a breakdown in the takeoff pattern of a rocket about to undergo its maiden voyage. The norm violation in this case is the failed take-off. The subject himself then (counterfactually) states: “And we wondered what might have happened if . . .” and the generation of counterfactual scenarios begins. As the attempt to undo the failed takeoff proceeds, more stringent, more desperate and more bizarre scenarios are tried in order to undo the negative event. This progressive generation of counterfactual alternatives to a extra-normal or unexpected event may be one source of bizarre imagery in dreams. After a number of scenarios are generated the norm violation is “handled” or undone and counterfactual generation ceases: “. . . they succeeded in putting the rocket into orbit.” This example of counterfactual analysis in dream mentation also shows how such analyses may contribute to problem solving in dreams. If the initial setting or theme of the dream involves a current problem or a current concern of the dreamer then counterfactual generation will occur around that theme. Essentially the dreamer will look at the problem from a variety of different perspectives as did our dreamer who concluded his dream with the comment “All this time we took photographs from a variety of different perspectives.” Thus, both dream and counterfactual content typically focuses on abnormal, extreme or unusual events in an effort to reinstate normality. Automaticity Although we can become conscious of our dreams and our counterfactual imaginings we are typically not conscious of most of them (though see Kahnemann, 1995 for a description of non-automatic, “elaborative” counterfactuals). Rather, dreaming and counterfactual thought happen to us whether we like it or not. They are, at least partially, automatic and largely unconscious cognitive processes. The input or triggering stimulus for these cognitive systems is an extra-normal violation of a routine or some kind of negative affect. In the case of dreams the input probably comes from memory stores, as Freud suggested, from previous day’s residues. The operations performed on this input generally involve—in the case of counterfactuals-alterations in a number of mutable and causal antecedents of the norm violation or the negative affect. If counterfactual thought occurs in dreams we would expect the same constraints to apply. This observation leads us to the following principle concerning the object or goal of dream mentation: cognitive operations in dreams should be mainly focused on “un-doing” the norm violation or the negative affect of a given situation by mentally altering causal antecedents of the violation. Problem-Solving and Learning Both counterfactual thought and dreaming promotes problem solving and learning via the standard mechanism of drawing inferences from the linking of chains of causal effects. We analyze causes of outcomes by asking how it could have happened differently. If altering
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x but not y leads to an interesting conclusion regarding the outcome in question then we know that x rather than y may profitably be included in causal analyses of the outcome. The main point here is that causal reasoning is influenced by counterfactual thought (Wells and Gavanski, 1989; Spellman and Mandel, 1999). Asking why something happened presupposes that something else might have happened. It presupposes, as Rosch pointed out, that the queried fact may be non-normative and questionable. Causal analyses of a situation then will often revolve around a number of alternatives to the situation and will be constrained by the counterfactual norm that is evoked and used as a standard of comparison. Kahnemann’s “elaborative counterfactuals” (Kahnemann, 1995) are often aimed specifically at solving a problem but they are also conscious and goal-oriented deliberations around the problem and may therefore not occur during the dream state as often as do automatic and pre-conscious counterfactuals. Tool for Coping with Stress Both dreaming and counterfactual processing appear to be vitally important tools for coping with trauma. Several reviews have appeared recently that cover the ways in which dreams help persons cope with emotional and physical trauma (Cartwright, 1991; Hartmann, 1998). People who have undergone a traumatic experience often find themselves dreaming about it repeatedly. In addition, there are clear attempts in the dream to find a way to work through the trauma. Hartmann (1998), for example, has suggested that the dream uses a ‘contextualizing image’ to help cope with the overwhelming affect associated with trauma. A person caught in a fire for example might later dream about a tidal wave. Counterfactuals appear to be natural sources for generation of contextualizing images. People do in fact use counterfactuals to cope with traumatic life events. Davis and Lehman (1995) found counterfactual thoughts to be quite prevalent in parents of babies who had died of sudden infant death syndrome and in families of victims of drunken drivers. The bereaved in Davis and Lehman’s studies did not gravitate toward a single, highly mutable antecedent when mentally attempting to undo the tragic outcome but rather, like the dreamer, they generated a variety of counterfactual possibilities in an effort to come to terms with the tragedy. When people find it difficult to stop the process of generating counterfactuals to a past trauma we might say that the process has taken on a kind of ruminative and perseverative character (‘counterfactual rumination’). Presumably counterfactual generations to the past trauma continue in the person’s dream life as well. Interestingly, recent studies have shown that depressive affect can be improved in people with depression by selective dream deprivation (see review in Ellman et al., 1991). It may be that improved affect in these individuals after dream deprivation is related to interruption of counterfactual rumination. Right-Sided Orbitofrontal Cortex I suggest that both the dream and counterfactual processing also share the same neural networks—namely those which crucially depend on the right orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). PET scan studies consistently show activation of limbic and orbitofrontal (but not dorsolateral) regions of the cortex during REM sleep (Hobson et al., 1998). OFC also appears to regulate emotional and autonomic nervous system functions. The right orbital frontal cortex, particularly Brodmann’s posterior medial orbital prefrontal cortical areas 12 and
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13 integrates information from hypothalamic and limbic regions. OFC also has strong connectivity with regions that process the various sensory modalities (Goldman-Rakic 1987). Through its reciprocal connections with limbic sites, the hippocampus and the basolateral, central, and extended amygdala regions, OFC has access to emotional memory and to ongoing emotional processing. The right OFC also appears to regulate negative affective responses. We have seen that both dreams and counterfactuals are preferentially activated by negative affect. Davidson (1995) has presented a body of electrophysiologic data that suggests that the left frontal lobe is more likely to mediate positive emotions than the right and the right frontal cortex more typically mediates negative emotions. Elevated right frontal activity in a child can predict its tolerance for separation from his or her mother. Davidson’s data are consistent with findings from studies of patients with brain injuries. Left frontal damage is far more likely to cause depression than are similar lesions to the right frontal cortex. Conversely lesions in right orbitofrontal cortex are more likely to lead to mania and unconcern than are similar lesions on the left. Finally the right OFC also specializes in memory retrieval (crucial for both dream and counterfactual processing) and in representations of the “Self.” In a review of PET studies on episodic encoding and retrieval processes Wheeler, Stuss and Tulving (1997) conclude that episodic retrieval is associated with an increased blood flow in the right frontal cortex with no increased blood flow in left frontal cortex; while episodic encoding is associated with the opposite pattern, i.e. increased flow in left-frontal cortex and no increased flow in right frontal cortex. They call this set of findings HERA for hemispheric encoding/retrieval asymmetry. The right frontal involvement, apparently, represents only retrieval set or retrieval mode not actual retrieval of information itself. The right frontal activation can be obtained even when subjects attempt but fail to retrieve items from memory. Actual episodic retrieval, or at least retrieval involving visual images, is associated with activation of posterior (parietal and occipital) cortical sites. Right frontal activation has recently been associated with experience of the self itself. Right frontal sites were activated whenever subjects processed or memorized materials referred to the self (Craik et al., 1999). Given the right OFC’s involvement in negative affect and in representations of the self it should not be surprizing to find that it is also involved in processing traumatic memories. Constraints on Counterfactual Thinking If we are correct in linking counterfactual thought with dreams then constraints on counterfactual processing may also apply to the dream. We therefore need to examine constraints on counterfactual thinking. One of the major constraints researchers have focused on up till now have been constraints on “mutability.” Kahneman and Miller (1986) proposed that each significant event in daily life normally evokes a norm that reflects prior expectancies about it as well as counterfactual thoughts about it. The thoughts are about how the event was expected to unfold and how it might have unfolded if certain conditions or facts were different or modified. These are the facts that are mutable. Kahneman and Miller proposed these general (1986) rules of mutability: 1. Exceptions are more mutable than routines. 2. Ideals are less mutable than non-ideals. When asked to change the outcome of a card game or tennis match subjects do so by imagining an improvement of the losing game rather than a deterioration of the winning game.
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3. Reliable knowledge is less mutable than unreliable knowledge. 4. Causes are less mutable than effects. 5. The actions of the focal or attended actor in a situation are more mutable than those of a background actor. It seems that dreams obey these broad constraints on the elements that can be modified as part of a counterfactual processing cycle. Take, for example, the following dream of a Female, 27 years old, 1st night in the Lab and 5th REM phase (also from Strauch and Meier, 1996): In the evening I was strolling with my Walkman through the outlying section of some town. There were two of us and we were listening to Stephan Eicher. A Spaniard and his daughter came along. He was either a colleague of mine or of my friend, and he said we were moving our bodies so oddly, we should try and listen to some other kind of music. And we took off the Walkman and put on some other music, some kind of Spanish music. And with his daughter he danced to the music. All of us started to dance. And the Spaniard taught us how to dance, first two firm steps with both feet together, and then one has to keep up one leg for quite a while and use it to embrace the man’s hip from behind. And next step down hard once more.
The norm violation in this case is walking and listening to ‘Stephan Eicher’ music. The dreamer ends up dancing and listening to music suggested by the Spanish dancer. To undo the norm violation the dreamer obeyed the constraints on mutability outlined above. The dreamer changed the exceptional, the non-ideal, the unreliable, the focal actor and effects rather than causes, ideals, routines, reliable knowledge or background actors. The exceptional in this case was listening to music the dreamer apparently disliked, the non-ideal was walking rather than dancing, the unreliable knowledge that could be changed was musical, the focal actor was the dreamer herself who jettisoned the walking for the dancing and the effects (learning the mechanics of the dance) of the change were emphasized rather than the cause (the Spaniard). Hypothesis and Predictions Given the above considerations on the similarities of counterfactual thinking and dreaming we can propose the following hypothesis:3 Cognitive operations in dreams function to identify a norm violation recorded in episodic and autobiographical memory and then to re-instate normality in memory by generating counterfactuals to the violation. Dream counterfactuals obey the same constraints on mutability as waking counterfactuals. This hypothesis implies that it is important for the general cognitive economy to ‘reinstate normality’ within memory representations that encode norm violations. The simplest 3A
possible objection to the hypothesis. Animal species other than humans apparently dream but counterfactual thinking is not usually ascribed to nonhumans. We might say the same about human infants who spend much of their sleep time in REM sleep and who probably do not engage in counterfactual cognitions during sleep. The ability to engage in counterfactual reasoning, however, probably depends on a more primal ability to engage in mental simulations of the “world” which is an ability widely distributed across species and in infants. Nonhuman animals and human infants likely entertain some form of mental simulation of the world during sleep. As brain complexity increases (specifically as the frontal lobes come online) mental simulations evolve into the ability to engage in counterfactual reasoning.
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hypothesis is that what constitutes a “norm” within the dream is the same as what constitutes a norm in waking life. This simplifying assumption is justified by Domhoff’s (1996) review of the literature on typical dream content. Domhoff’s review suggests that dreams largely reflect waking concerns. The following predictions flow from the hypothesis and its implications: 1. REM deprivation should interfere with the capacity to ‘re-instate normality’ within the relevant memory networks. Cognitive operations which depend on these networks should suffer (Ellman et al., 1991). 2. Acquisition of dreaming capacities in children should track the acquisition of cognitive abilities (such as visual simulation abilities) that support counterfactual thinking abilities in children (Foulkes, 1982). 3. Individual differences in dreaming capacities should roughly parallel individual differences in propensity to engage in counterfactual thinking (Kasimatis and Wells, 1995). 4. Dreaming and counterfactual thinking should influence the ability to cope with traumatic life events (Cartwright, 1991; Davis and Lehman, 1995). 5. Loss of dreaming associated with brain damage should be associated with impairment in the ability to engage in counterfactual thinking and vice versa.
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