The Affect of Emotion, Locus of Control and Self-Esteem on Counterfactual Thinking of Professional Managers

When facing with positive or negative events, individuals may produce counterfactual thoughts, professional managers will not be an exception. Professional managers work in a complicated environment, the decision they've made may not be satisfactory all the time, under this circumstances, the counterfactual thinking of professional managers will be more complex. And, the contend of counterfactual thinking will impact whether he/she can study from failure and accumulate experience so that they can deal with similar situation next time better. Building on existing research, this paper proposed five propositions, we consider that emotion, locus of control and self-esteem will influence the counterfactual thinking of professional managers in negative situation, and the impact of locus of control and self-esteem on counterfactual thinking may be moderated by emotion. Besides, future research directions are also pointed out.