Another way of making this point is in terms of contrast effects. If a person comes right out of a sauna and jumps into a swimming pool, the water in the pool feels really cold, because of the contrast between the water temperature and the temperature in the sauna. Jumping into the same pool after having just come indoors on a sub-zero winter day will produce sensations of warmth. And what counterfactual thinking does is establish a contrast between a person’s
