Optimists: It could have been worse; Pessimists: It could have been better: Dispositional optimism and pessimism and counterfactual thinking

•Conceptualized dispositional optimism and pessimism within the context of norm theory•Found links between cognitive expectancies about the future and counterfactual thinking about past negative events•Results provide evidence of construct validity for the Counterfactual Thinking for Negative Events Scale.

Optimism and pessimism are cognitive expectancies regarding future events, whereas counterfactual thinking is the cognitive process of imagining alternatives to events that occurred in the past. The purpose of this study was to conceptualize dispositional optimism and pessimism within the context of norm theory and examine relationships between dispositional optimism and pessimism and counterfactual thinking. Undergraduate students (N = 833) completed measures of counterfactual thinking and optimism and pessimism. After controlling for the effects of positive and negative affect, it was found that downward counterfactual thinking (imagining how things could have been worse) was associated with optimism and that upward styles of counterfactual thinking (imagining how things could have been better) were associated with pessimism. These results suggest that thinking about past events is consistent with expectations about the future.