Assume that the winning lottery ticket was purchased at the convenience store just around the corner from your house. According to research on counterfactual thinking, you would probably feel worse than if the winning ticket had been purchased all the way across the state, because. a. you could easily remember what it was like to struggle to make every penny count.
b. it would be easy to imagine all the wonderful things you could do with the prize.
c. you could think back on a dozen opportunities that you had to buy the winning ticket, but didn't.
d. you would assume that the local winner is similar to you.

Voters commonly condemn politicians for being insincere, but politicians often must disguise their true feelings when they make public statements. if they expressed their honest views—about, say, their party's policies—then achieving politically necessary compromises would be much more difficult. clearly, the very insincerity that people decry shows that our government is functioning well. which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines this reasoning? (a) achieving political compromises is not all that is necessary for the proper functioning of a government. (b) some political compromises are not in the best long-term interest of the government. (c) voters often judge politicians by criteria other than the sincerity with which they express their views. (d) a political party's policies could turn out to be detrimental to the functioning of a government. (e) some of the public statements made by politicians about their party's policies could in fact be sincere.