How ”What Might Have Been” can Shape What’s Yet to Come: Preliminary Evidence for Counterfactual Thoughts as an Intervention in Early Engineer- ing Courses

Students often struggle in first-year courses required for engineering majors, with up to 30% of students in some of these courses earning lower than a C. Previous research suggests students may develop study skills too late in the semester to get on track in these courses. The goal of our project, funded by NSF's Engineering Education program in the Division of Engineering Education and Centers, is to leverage research in cognitive science to develop an intervention to increase rates of successful completion in these early courses. Specifically, previous research suggests that counterfactual thoughts, which identify how things “might have been” different than they really were, can increase intentions for future behavior and improve future outcomes. Generating counterfactuals after an early course setback may thus be a useful strategy for overcoming these challenges and getting back on track in the major. We therefore examined whether students generated counterfactuals about exam performance, and the conditions under which these thoughts were associated with improved course performance.