Nowadays, researchers and managers believe that paying attention to employees' thoughts facilitates sustainable competitive advantage in organizations. After the introduction of cognitive science into organizations, the identification of what it is, how it is formed, and the formulation of Counterfactual Thoughts (CTs) have been investigated and analyzed in the field of Human Resources (HR). In this study, a systematic review of the literature in the field of CT has been done with the aim of identifying the antecedents and key consequences of this field and analyzing them. In this research, a two-stage methodology has been considered including (i) Extraction of antecedents and consequences, (ii) Weighting of antecedents. In the first stage, using the screening of articles based on the seven-step method of Sandelowski and Barroso, the antecedents and consequences of CTs, synthesis and interpretation have also been implemented through the coding method of qualitative interpretive meta-analysis. In the second stage, the consequences extracted in the field of counterfactuals are weighted using the matrix of paired comparisons based on the opinions of experts in the field of HR and AHP, which can be used to evaluate employees' thoughts and behavior. Based on the screening of the articles, the antecedents are categorized into 4 general concepts with 12 codes, and the consequences are classified into 2 and 8 codes. The results of the AHP analysis show that the normalization of the condition related to the behavioral outcome has the greatest impact on the evaluation of employees' thoughts and behavior, while the regulation of related emotions as a result of attitude has the least impact among the codes introduced in this evaluation.
