Hypocrisy is also closely related to irony (i.e., a disparity of word and deed) and this chapter advances the claim that hypocrisy is really a form of situational irony, especially as it relates to moral judgments (e.g., not practicing what you preach). Shelley reviews past theories in philosophy and psychology (e.g., moral hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance) that offer insights into how people detect hypocrisy in others and even excuse it in themselves. But he goes on to outline his “bicoherence theory of situational irony” in which a situation is judged as “ironic” when it displays a bicoherent conceptual structure, adequate salience, and evokes an appropriate configuration of emotions. Bicoherence is important because it shows that while incoherence can be minimized, it cannot be eliminated from people’s understandings, despite their cognitive prowess and best efforts. Shelley considers numerous examples of hypocrisy, including ones in which something is explicitly called out as “hypocrisy,” to show its effectiveness in criticizing people for their shortcomings.

People often create counterfactual alternatives to reality about how things could have been different “if only …” The creation of alternatives has widespread effects in daily mental life: It enables people to explain the past, to prepare for the future, and to experience emotions such as regret and guilt. In this chapter I consider the profound impact of the counterfactual imagination on everyday thought by focusing on its impact on moral judgments such as blame and responsibility. Insights from the study of imagination and morality shed light on the mechanisms underlying the counterfactual imagination: simulation processes that construct an alternative to reality by mutating aspects of the mental representation of reality. The relationship between the imagination and morality is two-way: On the one hand, counterfactuals affect moral judgments because people rely on them to identify causes of an outcome and to probe a person’s intentions and knowledge. On the other hand, moral thoughts affect the imagination because moral norms provide important “fault lines,” “junctures” in the mental representation of reality that affect the accessibility of imagined alternatives. The two-way relationship corroborates the idea that the imagination depends on cognitive processes shared with reasoning.