Bitter taste in your mouth, an almost physical pain, a lot of
self-blame for not knowing or doing better and a rush of negative feelings are
familiar to all humans (at least to the ones that are not sociopaths). It is REGRET. It is one of the most
miserable feelings (or emotions as psychologists say) that a person can
experience. Because regret is such a miserable feeling it is highly important
for human life and particularly for decision making.
Let’s see first why regret is
useful. Although aversive, from a
pragmatic point of view regret is very useful. Experiencing regret is a
psychological punishment for making a bad decision or choice in the past.
For example, imagine a guy called
Frank who went out for a couple of beers with some friends and acquaintances.
At one point, another group (friends of friends) joins Frank’s group and the
new group suggests that from this point on they should drink only vodka and who
doesn’t wants to will have to leave the table. Being under social pressure and not
wanting to appear weak, Frank agrees despite the fact that he can’t drink more
than 2-3 beers without getting really drunk. The next day, Frank has a horrible
hang-over and an immense head ache. After he recovered from the side-effects of
drinking vodka in huge quantities, Frank realized that his decision to stay on
and “not look weak” was a stupid one. After all he barely knew the people that
came at the table (new group). Moreover, he learned that he was brought home by
some friends and his mother in law opened the door… Frank didn’t want to look
weak in front of some strangers and make a fool of himself in front of his
mother in law…
Knowing all this, Frank feels REGRET. He regrets making the
decision of staying on and drinking vodka. The source of Frank’s regret is the fact that he knows he could have
done better. He knows it would have been better if he would have simply
excused himself after the first two beers and went home.
The regret that Frank experiences
is a psychological punishment for a bad decision in the past. This punishment is
usually useful for not doing the same mistake in the future.
Regret about decisions made in the past is called “Retrospective regret”
or “Experienced regret” in the sense that the feeling is actually experienced.
Coming back to Frank’s feeling of
regret, he regrets staying on and drinking vodka because he is aware of both
(all) potential outcomes. He has just experienced a horrible hang-over and
feels badly because his mother in law saw him drunk. At the same time, Frank is
familiar with not having a hangover and not feeling bad about what his mother
in law thinks of him.
This is a very important feature
of regret, namely knowing the outcomes of all options. If in the case of Frank’s
vodka adventure all potential outcomes are known, in other decisions we make or
made we do not always know the outcomes of all the choices we make. Regret, by
its very nature, is comparison based. We feel regret if we know or we can
imagine the outcome of doing or choosing differently than we have done.
If (retrospective) regret is
about bad decisions (choices) made in the past, then there are two sides of regret, namely outcome and
process.
The outcome regret refers strictly to the outcome of the decision.
In the example of Frank’s vodka adventure, Frank feels regret with regard to
the outcome of his decision, namely the hangover and the embarrassment in front
of his mother in law.
At the same time, the
way in which we make a decision can be a source of regret. For example
Frank can regret letting himself influenced by the other people around him at
the pub. In other situations one can feel regret about making a decision
without searching for more information, or for following the advice of sales
people.
In brief, we feel regret about the outcomes of our decision and we feel regret
about how we made the decision. These are called in scientific terms “Outcome
regret” and “Process regret”.
Another interesting thing about regret is that it can occur for both doing and not doing something. For example if
you own some assets and their price goes up and you decide to sell them. Next
week (after selling them) you learn that the price has gone even higher. You
will feel regret for selling the assets the previous week and not making a
bigger profit. This is regret for acting or doing something.
Now imagine that you have some
assets and their price goes up. You have a hunch that the price will rise even
more the next week and you decide not to sell. Next week you learn that the
price has collapsed. Now you will feel regret for not acting or not doing
something.
Retrospective (experienced) regret acts as a psychological punishment
for making a bad decision. The punishment can be for the outcome of our
decision or for the way in which we made the decision. We can be punished for
doing or for not doing something. The main role of retrospective (experience)
regret is to make us learn to do better next time.
Apart from retrospective regret
there is anticipated regret. If retrospective regret is to punish us for
a bad decision so that we learn for the future, anticipated regret has the role
of making us aware of the consequences of our decisions. Anticipated regret stimulates
us to make (or at least try to make) better
decisions.
As you know, regret is a
miserable feeling and we humans are motivated to avoid it. If we become aware
that we might experience regret in the future we have all the motivation to
avoid it.
Thankfully, anticipated regret does not occur for each and every decision we make.
If we go to the supermarket in the bakery section and choose ciabata over
baguette we will not anticipate any regret and that is really good. For small
and unimportant decisions we do not anticipate regret. Similarly for decisions
that have a short term impact. The “ciabata” over “baguette” example is illustrative
for both not very important decisions and for short term impact. After all,
bread will be eaten fast.
Another feature of anticipated
regret is that in order for it to occur, the decision maker has to learn the
outcomes of both the chosen option and the forgone ones. Since regret by its
nature is comparison based, in order to be experienced (or anticipated) the
outcomes of the forgone options have to be known. However, I believe that
anticipated regret can occur even in the absence of knowing the alternative outcomes,
but if the decision maker is later unsatisfied with the outcome of the chosen
option. In other words, we anticipate regret even if we will not find out what
it would have been like if we chose another option.
A very good example of
anticipated regret is the purchase of a house and subsequently taking a
mortgage. It is a very important decision and it is a difficult one. Buying a
house might not seem difficult, but trust me that it is. Taking a mortgage is
very difficult since most (normal) people have virtually zero knowledge on
complex financial products. Both the house and the mortgage have long term
impact on the people who buy them. Although they might never find out the
outcomes of buying a different house and of taking a different type of
mortgage, the decision makers are aware that they might regret their choices in
the future.
To sum up about anticipated regret, it is meant to stimulate us to (try to) make good
decisions. It occurs when decisions are difficult and important. When it is
possible to find out the outcomes of both chosen and forgone options,
anticipated regret becomes stronger.
Since regret is such a powerful and important emotion, people have developed ways to manage it
(or strategies to regulate in a more sophisticated language). Next I will
present the most common ways to manage regret.
Let’s talk first about managing retrospective or experienced
regret. One approach of managing
experienced regret is to decrease the importance of the decision. For
example Frank might say “so what if my mother in law saw me drunk? It happens
and other sons in law come home drunk daily. I only did it once.”
Another approach towards managing
experienced regret is to focus on the
decision. The first way in which we
manage regret is to undo the decision if this is possible. For example if
you regret buying those superb but extremely uncomfortable shoes, you can
simply return them, thus undoing the decision to buy them.
The second way is to justify the decision that was the source of the
experienced regret. For example if you regret buying the aforementioned
shoes, you can simply say (think) that you need those shoes to fit in at the
fancy party next week.
The third way is to deny the responsibility for the decision. For
example, in the case of the uncomfortable shoes you can simply blame Gloria
(your friend with whom you went shopping) for pushing you to buy them.
Since regret is by its nature
alternative focused, another approach of
managing regret is to focus on the forgone alternative. The first way of doing so is to switch to
the alternative. For example if you regret buying the superb but
uncomfortable shoes and not the less good-looking but more comfortable ones,
you can simply go to the store and change the shoes.
The second way is to re-evaluate the alternative. For example, if
you feel regret for buying the superb but uncomfortable shoes and not the less
good-looking but more comfortable ones, you can say (think) that the more
comfortable ones were much more ugly than the ones you bought and that the
people at the party next week will not even notice them.
Another approach to managing regret is to focus on the feeling itself.
One way of doing so is psychological repair work, which basically means “letting
time to heal the feeling”. The second way is to suppress or deny having the
feeling of regret.
Let’s talk now about managing anticipated regret. The first
approach to manage anticipated regret is to decrease the importance of the
decision. In essence this means saying (thinking) this decision is not so
important.
The second approach to managing regret is to focus on the decision
and there are four ways of doing so. The
first way of managing anticipated regret is to increase the quality of the
decision. For example if you think that you will experience regret after
making the decision, you can look for more information on the topic or ask an
expert in the field.
The second way of managing anticipated regret by focusing on the
decision is to make the decision more justifiable. For example, you can
make a list of reasons why you made (are ready to make) a particular choice.
The third way is to transfer the responsibility of the decision. For
example, you can decide to go with the advice of a specialist in the field.
Basically you are not really the one who makes the decision.
The fourth way is to delay or avoid the decision. For example if
possible you will delay the decision to “sleep on it” or to give yourself more
time to think about it… or you can simply postpone the decision forever.
The third approach to managing anticipated regret is to focus on the
alternative. The first way of
managing anticipated regret is to either restrict or enlarge the choice set
(options available). For example if you have to choose a car out of 25 options,
you could simply say (think) “let me focus on the ones that have a good fuel
consumption” and thus restrict your decision to only 5 options. Another example
is when faced with a difficult decision (and anticipating regret) you can say
(think) “Let me see what other options are out there”.
The second way of managing regret by focusing on the alternative is to
ensure decision reversibility. For example you can negotiate with the car
dealer that if you don’t like the car you can return it in the next week after
the purchase. However, ensuring decision reversibility has some side effects on
satisfaction, namely that you will always think if you should reverse or not
your decision.
The third way of managing regret by focusing on the alternative is to
simply avoid feed-back on the forgone options. This basically means to
ignore the outcomes of the options you did not choose. For example if you decide
to go to a rock concert and not go to a jazz festival, you should not ask your
friends “how was at the jazz festival?”.
The fourth approach of managing anticipated regret is to focus on the
feeling itself. In essence this means that you acknowledge that regret
might occur and try to deal with the feeling itself.
Up to this point I have described
the emotion of regret and presented the most common ways in which people manage
it. Now I would like to focus on the implications of regret in decision making,
especially the business and social part.
In social life we often encounter
the phrase “You will regret this”. Sometimes it is true, other times it is not.
At the same time simply informing people about the fact that they will
experience regret at a later stage has its shortcomings. I believe that
focusing on how to avoid regret is more important. If we want to influence
someone’s behavior or decisions it is, in my view, better to look at the
strategies of managing regret both anticipated and experienced and focus on the
solidity of one’s arguments. If someone wants to make a purchase that might
result in regret, it means that that person is somehow managing anticipated regret.
For example if a friend intends
to buy some very nice but very uncomfortable shoes, then it means that she is
managing her anticipated regret. If you want her to change her mind it is
useful to understand how she is managing the future regret and to use the same
(counter)-arguments to convince her.
In business, regret is usually
used in advertising in the sense of presenting the viewer with horrifying scenarios
where she regrets not buying something. In my opinion, regret is much more
important. Our choices and decisions that might result in regret (anticipated
regret) are often poorly managed. I had the occasion of giving some attention
to the role of anticipated regret in decisions with long term effects (buying a
mortgage). The most common way of dealing with anticipated regret is to go to a
“consultant” and it is not necessarily a bad choice. At the same time, other
ways of managing anticipated regret are not used and many opportunities are
lost.
If you have read till here, then
you do not regret it.
Note: This post is documented
from Pieters, Rik, and Marcel Zeelenberg (2007), “A Theory of Regret Regulation
1.0” and commentaries, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 17 (1), 3-35.
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