Abstract
Regret is an unpleasant feeling that may arise following decisions that ended poorly, and may affect the decision-maker's well-being and future decision making. Some studies show that a decision to act leads to greater regret than a decision not to act when both resulted in failure, because the latter is usually the norm. In some cases, when the norm is to act, this pattern is reversed. We suggest that the decision maker's regulatory focus, affects regret after action or inaction. Specifically, promotion-focused individuals, who tend to be more proactive, view action as more normal than prevention-focused individuals, and therefore experience regulatory fit when an action decision is made. Hence, we hypothesized that promotion-focused individuals will feel less regret than prevention-focused individuals when a decision to act ended poorly. In addition, we hypothesized that a trigger for change implied in the situation, decreases the level of regret following action. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 330 participants enrolled in an online survey. The participants received six decision scenarios, in which they were asked to evaluate the level of regret following action and inaction. Individual regulatory focus was measured by two different scales. Promotion-focused individuals attributed less regret than prevention-focused individuals to action decisions. Regret following inaction was not affected by regulatory focus. In addition, a trigger for change decreases regret following action. Orthodox people tend to attribute more regret than non-orthodox to a person who made an action decision. The results contribute to the literature by showing that not only the situation but also the decision maker's orientation affects the regret after action vs. inaction.
Highlights
Every decision that we make in our life carries the risk that we might regret it
We suggest that a trigger for change makes action more normal than without such a trigger, and it reduces regret following action, in line with the norm theory of Kahneman and Miller (1986), which suggests that regret is greater when it follows less normal decisions
As our results show, inaction decisions are generally more preferred and less regretted by all individuals, regardless of their regulatory focus
Summary
Every decision that we make in our life carries the risk that we might regret it. But what type of decisions will be regretted more: decisions of doing something or decisions of not doing anything? In the current paper we suggest that individual differences in regulatory focus would affect individuals’ tendency to regret more what they did or what they did not do.Regret is an unpleasant feeling that is aroused after retrospection that involves awareness to the negative aspects of a decision. In the current paper we suggest that individual differences in regulatory focus would affect individuals’ tendency to regret more what they did or what they did not do. The regret process involves running a mental re-creation of what happened vs what could have happened, comparing these two options and deciding that the decision process and the outcome were suboptimal (Zeelenberg et al, 2002; Roese et al, 2009; Das and Joffe, 2012). The level of regret depends on an individual’s perception of the mental gap Regulatory Focus and Regret Following Action/Inaction between what happened as opposed to what could have happened. The greater the gap, the stronger the regret (Das and Kerr, 2010). Regret could lead to regret aversion, which further encourages people to learn from past decisions in order to avoid similar experiences in the future (Zeelenberg and Beattie, 1997; Zeelenberg et al, 2002; Roese et al, 2009; Das and Kerr, 2010; Das and Joffe, 2012)
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