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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 8, 1050-1058 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167206288282
© 2006 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Long Ago It Was Meant to Be: The Interplay Between Time, Construal, and Fate Beliefs

Jeremy Burrus

Neal J. Roese

University of Illinois

Fate means that an event was meant to be, that is, predetermined by prior unseen forces. Most people believe in fate, which seems at odds with similarly pervasive beliefs that alternative past actions would have brought about different circumstances (i.e., counterfactual beliefs). Two experiments revealed that construal level accounts for the relative plausibility of fate versus counterfactual explanations. Construal was manipulated in Experiment 1, such that goal pursuits framed in abstract ("why?") as opposed to concrete ("how?") terms heightened fate but not counterfactual attributions. Extending this finding, Experiment 2 showed that fate judgments were higher for temporally distant than recent past events, an effect mediated by construal perceptions. Neither counterfactual nor luck judgments varied with temporal distance. These findings help to explain how individuals explain complicated yet meaningful life events while extending the reach of Trope and Liberman's (2003) construal-level theory.

Key Words: fate • counter factual • construal • luck • time • temporal focus


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K. Epstude and N. J. Roese
The Functional Theory of Counterfactual Thinking
Personality and Social Psychology Review, May 1, 2008; 12(2): 168 - 192.
[Abstract] [PDF]