The role of agency in regret and relief in 3- to 10-year-old children

Abstract

The emotions of regret and relief are mediated by the counterfactual comparison between the obtained and foregone outcomes of our decisions. Regret is strongly associated with a feeling of responsibility for a decision when the outcome might have been better. This may be contrasted with disappointment, which is experienced when the outcome occurs independently of the agent's decisions. The same contrast may be made between these emotions’ positive counterparts of relief and elation. The current studies seek to make important distinctions between children's experience of regret and disappointment, and relief and elation. Children aged between 3 and 10 years (N = 225) chose between two gambles with different levels of risk under differing conditions of feedback and agency. There was a significant effect of agency for children aged 6 years and older following regret eliciting trials. A significant effect of agency was found only for children aged 10 years for relief trials. There was no effect of agency for elation and disappointment trials. These findings suggest that children as young as 6 are sensitive to manipulations of agency, and that responsibility for a decision is crucial for children to feel a negative emotion upon discovering that acting otherwise would have turned out better. These findings suggest a more nuanced developmental trajectory for the counterfactual emotions than was previously considered.