Regret

Definition

Regret is the negative emotion that people experience when realizing or imagining that their present situation would have been better had they decided or acted differently. Regret thus originates in a comparison between outcomes of a chosen option and the nonchosen alternatives in which the latter outperforms the former. This painful emotion reflects on one's own causal role in the current, suboptimal situation. The emotion regret is accompanied by feelings that one should have known better, by having a sinking feeling, by thoughts about the mistake one has made and the opportunities lost, by tendencies to kick oneself and to correct one's mistake, by desires to undo the event and get a second chance, and by actually doing this if given the opportunity. Put differently, regret is experienced as an aversive state that focuses one's attention on one's own causal role in the occurrence of a negative outcome. It is thus a cognitively based emotion that motivates one to think about how the negative event came about and how one could change it, or how one could prevent its future occurrence.

Relation to Decision Making

As such, regret is unique in its relation to decision making and hence to feelings of responsibility for the negative outcome. One only experiences regret over a bad outcome when at some point in time one could have prevented the outcome from happening. Of course, other emotions can also be the result of decisions; for example, one may be disappointed with a decision outcome, or happy about the process by which one made a choice. But, all other emotions can also be experienced in situations in which no decisions are made, whereas regret is exclusively tied to decisions. For example, one can be disappointed with the weather and happy with a birthday present, but one cannot regret these instances (unless the disappointing present was suggested by oneself). Thus, in regret, personal agency and responsibility are central, whereas in other aversive emotions such as anger, fear, and disappointment, agency for the negative outcomes is either undetermined, in the environment, or in another agent. Hence, regret is the prototypical decision-related emotion in the sense that it is felt in response to a decision and that it can influence decision making.

The relation between regret and decision making is also apparent in regret's connection to counterfactual thinking. Counterfactual thoughts are thoughts about what might have been. It is important to note that not all counterfactual thoughts produce regret, just specifically those that change a bad outcome into a good one by changing a decision or a choice. Thus, when it rains on the way home from work and a person gets wet, the person feels regret when he or she generates a counterfactual thought in which the person brought an umbrella, but not when he or she generates a counterfactual in which it would be a beautiful day. In the latter case, counterfactual thoughts about better weather that could have been would result in disappointment but not in regret (there was nothing the person could have done about the weather, so there is nothing to regret).

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