To date, studies exploring the relationship of counterfactual thoughts with episodic memories and episodic future thoughts have focused mainly on voluntary mental time travel. We explore mental time travel in everyday life and find that episodic counterfactual thinking occurs to a much lesser extent than thinking about the past or the future (12%, 22%, and 54%, respectively), is used mainly for mood regulation purposes, and the temporal distribution decreases as a function of time. We observe similarities in phenomenological detail: memories and counterfactual thoughts sharing similar ratings of sensory detail, memories and future thoughts sharing similar ratings of positivity, and counterfactual and future thoughts sharing similar ratings of mental time travel. We discuss the implications of episodic counterfactual thinking in everyday life.

中文翻译：

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精神时间进入日常生活中的情景未来，情景过去和情景反事实过去

迄今为止，探索反事实思想与情景记忆和情景未来思想之间关系的研究主要集中在自愿性的精神时光旅行上。我们探索了日常生活中的心理时间旅行，发现与事实有关的反事实思维发生的程度远小于对过去或未来的思考（分别为12％，22％和54％），主要用于调节情绪，时间分布随时间而减小。我们在现象学细节上观察到相似之处：记忆和反事实思想共享相似的感官细节评级，记忆和未来思想共享相似的积极性评级，反事实和未来思想共享相似的精神时空评级。我们讨论了情景反事实思维在日常生活中的含义。