Role Of Regret Research Articles

Role of regret in transfer of training: do negative emotions enhance training transfer effects?

ABSTRACT This study proposed a training transfer mechanism with creative self-efficacy, training need, and supervisor support as antecedents for the motivation to transfer, motivation to transfer as a mediator of training and regret as a moderator between motivation to transfer and training transfer. A two-phase experiment was conducted. In Phase One: an intervention group (n = 221) and a comparison group (n = 238) received 24-hour creativity and management training, respectively. Phase Two was conducted six months after the training. After the participants (n = 212) filled in the questionnaire, structural equation models were employed to analyse factors affecting the training transfer model. The results showed that in the long-term perspective of training transfer, supervisor support is more important than individuals’ creative self-efficacy at the onset of creativity training. Additionally, regret is a positive moderator; individuals’ motivation to transfer increases when they reflect on and correct their behaviour.

A two-factor theoretical model of social media discontinuance: role of regret, inertia, and their antecedents

PurposeAlthough materializing the benefits of social media substantially depends on sustained user participation, social media service providers are experiencing a decline in the number of users. Despite the relevance of studying and managing discontinuance behaviors, a systematic empirical investigation remains lacking. The present study draws on the idea of a two-factor model and aims to examine the enabler, inhibitor and their antecedents in the context of social media discontinuance.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed theoretical model was empirically validated through an online survey study of 238 social media users in China.FindingsFindings indicated that two negative outcomes of social media use (i.e. social overload and invasion of privacy) induce regret experience and ultimately foster discontinuance intentions. The development of discontinuance intentions was undermined by the level of inertia, which is rooted in social media habit, sunk costs and affective commitment.Originality/valueThis study draws attention to the fundamental difference between continuance and discontinuance behaviors, advances the existing understanding of postadoption behaviors by focusing on discontinuance inhibitors (e.g. inertia) and develops the first two-factor model for social media discontinuance by integrating the regret and status quo bias literature.

Adding Regret to Fear Appeals: When the Going Gets Difficult, Regret Gets Action

In accord with Protection Motivation Theory, this article finds fear appeals ineffective at motivating health protection behaviors perceived to be difficult; when task difficulty is high, there is a decrease in perceptions of self‐efficacy and a reduction in health protection behaviors. This research examines a novel way to motivate health protection when task difficulty is salient by adding regret to fear appeals. The inclusion of regret, an emotion that motivates corrective behavioral change, bolsters self‐efficacy and enhances health protection intentions. In fact, even when task difficulty is made salient, self‐efficacy and behavioral intentions remain strong in the fear plus regret condition. Thus, in contrast to straight fear appeals, adding regret to fear appeals results in a reversal effect enhancing self‐efficacy and behavioral intentions when task difficulty is made salient. This research highlights the independence of task difficulty, self‐efficacy, and the role of regret in motivating difficult health protection behaviors.

The role of regret and disappointment in the repurchase effect: Does gender matter?

This paper analyzes gender differences in the repurchase effect in an experiment based on Frydman and Camerer (2016). The results show that women exhibit a significantly higher repurchase effect than men. Specifically, women are more reluctant than men to repurchase a stock that increases in price following a prior sale. However, no significant gender difference in the repurchase of a sold stock that decreases in price is found. Furthermore, women are more strongly impacted than men by regret and disappointment from repurchasing a sold stock that increases in price, but no such impact exists from repurchasing a sold stock that decreases in price.

The Role of Regret in Medical Decision-making

In this paper, I explore the role that regret does and should play in medical decision-making. Specifically, I consider whether the possibility of a patient experiencing post-treatment regret is a good reason for a clinician to counsel against that treatment or to withhold it. Currently, the belief that a patient may experience post-treatment regret is sometimes taken as a sufficiently strong reason to withhold it, even when the patient makes an explicit, informed request. Relatedly, medical researchers and practitioners often understand a patient’s post-treatment regret to be a significant problem, one that reveals a mistake or flaw in the decision-making process. Contrary to these views, I argue that the possibility of post-treatment regret is not necessarily a good reason for withholding the treatment. This claim is justified by appealing to respect for patient autonomy. Furthermore, there are occasions when the very reference to post-treatment regret during medical decision-making is inappropriate. This, I suggest, is the case when the decision concerns a “personally transformative treatment”. This is a treatment that alters a person’s identity. Because the treatment is transformative, neither clinicians nor the patient him/herself can ascertain whether post-treatment regret will occur. Consequently, I suggest, what matters in determining whether to offer a personally transformative treatment is whether the patient has sufficiently good reasons for wanting the treatment at the time the decision is made. What does not matter is how the patient may subsequently be changed by undergoing the treatment.

Self-Rated Health and Sick Leave among Nurses and Physicians: The Role of Regret and Coping Strategies in Difficult Care-Related Situations.

Moral distress – such as feeling strong regret over difficult patient situations – is common among nurses and physicians. Regret intensity, as well as the coping strategies used to manage regrets, may also influence the health and sickness absence of healthcare professionals. The objective of this study was to determine if the experience of regret related to difficult care-related situations is associated with poor health and sick leave and if coping strategies mediate these associations. Two cross-sectional surveys were conducted in Switzerland (Geneva, 2011 and Zurich, 2014). Outcomes were self-rated health (SRH) and sick leave in the last 6 months. We examined the associations of regret intensity with the most important care-related regret, number of recent care-related regrets, and coping strategies, using regressions models. Among 775 respondents, most reported very good SRH and 9.7% indicated absence from work during four working days or more. Intensity of the most important regret was associated with poor SRH among nurses and physicians, and with higher sick leave among nurses. Maladaptive emotion-focused strategies were associated with poor SRH among nurses, whereas adaptive emotion-focused strategies were positively associated with higher SRH and lower sick leave among physicians. Because care-related regret is an integral part of clinical practice in acute care hospitals, helping physicians and, especially, nurses to learn how to deal with negative events may yield beneficial consequences at the individual, patient care, and institutional level.

Affect, emotion, and decision making

This article reviews research on affect, emotion, and decision making published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes from the 1990s onward. The review is organized around four topical areas: the influence of incidental mood states and discrete emotions on decision making, the influence of integral affect on decision making, affect and emotion as a consequence of decision making, and the role of regret in decision making. Some potential limitations of extant work on affect, emotion, and decision making are discussed. Lastly, particularly promising directions for future research are elaborated including intuition and decision making, ethical decision making, and affect and emotion over time and decision making.

Negative word of mouth intentions during self-service technology failures: The mediating role of regret

Adoption of self-service technologies (SSTs) is changing the current service landscape in many ways. However, most previous research focused on customer’s acceptance of such technologies, neglecting the consequences of technology adoption. In the current research, a specific behavioral consequence, negative word of mouth (NWOM) during SST failure is investigated. Through an experimental study, the effect of SST failure on customer’s NWOM intentions and the underlying mechanism of the relationship are demonstrated. Specifically, customers who have experienced SST failures were more likely to engage in NWOM because of the heightened regret felt at the moment, which is a specific negative emotion associated with self-blame. In addition, the moderated mediation effect of an individual difference, fear of negative evaluation is suggested to moderate the relationship between regret and NWOM intentions. Taken together, the current research highlights the role of a negative emotion during service failures.

The Role of Regret in Institutional Persistence and Change

This paper theorizes the impact of regret in institutional persistence and change. We articulate a framework modelling how decision-maker regret influences how organizations respond to institutional pressures. The extent to which individuals anticipate regret or deal with previous regrettable experiences leads to the choice of either isomorphic (i.e. more conformist) or non-isomorphic (i.e. less conformist) institutional outcomes. Identifying differences in this response connects regret to institutional arrangements, bringing the individual back to the institution. Doing so, the paper addresses the acknowledged lack of specific attention to micro-level meaning systems in institutional theory, and tangentially deals with the silence in regret research on broader institutional consequences. We conclude by discussing how regret demonstrates an alternative explanation of how divergent organizational responses can occur in similar institutional contexts.

Real and hypothetical endowment effects when exchanging lottery tickets: Is regret a better explanation than loss aversion?

The endowment effect is the finding that possession of an item adds to its value. We introduce a new procedure for testing this effect: participants are divided into two groups. Possession group participants inspect a numbered lottery ticket and know it is theirs, while inspection group participants only inspect a lottery ticket without being endowed with it. Subsequently participants choose between playing the lottery with this (possessed or inspected) ticket, or exchanging it for another one. Our procedure tests for the effect of endowment while controlling for the influence of transaction costs as well as for inspection effects and the influence of bargaining roles (buyer vs. seller), which often afflict experimentation with the endowment effect. In a real setting, tickets in possession were valued significantly higher than inspected tickets. Contrary to some findings in the literature participants also correctly predicted these valuation differences in a hypothetical situation, both for themselves as well as for others. Furthermore, our results suggest that regret rather than loss aversion may be the source of the endowment effect in an experimental setting using lottery tickets. Applying our procedure to a setting employing riskless objects in form of mugs revealed rather ambiguous results, thus emphasizing that the role of regret might be less prominent in non-lottery settings.

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About the Authors

The role of regret in the owner-manager decision-making in the family business: A conceptual approach

This article responds to recent calls of scholars for more research on emotions in the family business by providing an initial analytical study of the owner-manager regret in decision-making. First, we suggest an enlarged theoretical framework for analyzing decision-making in the family business by building on the behavioural model of emotions in decision-making of Loewenstein and Lerner (2003) and Regret Theory. Second, we offer a first characterization of the emotion of regret in the family business. Given the overlap between the family and the business systems, we introduce a dual dimension of regret that is family-based and business-based. We also extend the analysis towards a dynamic view of regret by accounting for the owner-manager's experienced regret at the time of decision in addition to the traditionally analyzed expected regret. Departing from the common assumption that the owner-manager is altruistic towards the family and acts as a steward for the business, we consider that the owner-manager's expected outcomes refer to emotional and financial value maximization. Based on these characterizations, we develop a conceptual model with a series of propositions on the role of the owner-manager regret in decision-making. Finally, we present the theoretical, conceptual and practical contributions of the study as well as its limitations from which stem research avenues on regret and decision-making in the family business.

Kupperman, Joel J., Theories of Human Nature

In this broad-ranging comparative overview, Joel J. Kupperman examines theories of human nature throughout history and from multiple philosophical traditions. Kupperman’s book is intended primarily for undergraduate philosophy students, including those in courses on the philosophy of human nature. It serves as an alternative to books such as Leslie Stevenson and David L. Haberman’s Ten Theories of Human Nature and Louis P. Pojman’s Who Are We? Theories of Human Nature, both of which also take a comparative approach, but cover a somewhat smaller selection of thinkers. In Part I (Chapters 1 and 2), Kupperman offers general guiding reflections on the topic of human nature, a preliminary overview of the thinkers whom he will examine, and observations on how the notion of “human nature” arises in everyday thinking. He goes on to distinguish various kinds of theories of human nature. Some theories, Kupperman says, are more descriptive (i.e., focused on human nature as it generally is); others are more focused on a conception of fulfilled human nature (i.e., human nature as it ought to be); still others offer hybrid approaches. In Part II (Chapters 3–7), Kupperman examines pre-modern conceptions of human nature. He begins his historical overview with discussions of the Upanishads and the Buddha. Kupperman explains how the Upanishads’ conception of the self as atman is capable of explaining the unity of the self through time. In his treatment of the Buddha’s views, Kupperman discusses the nature of desire and suffering, as well as complexities in the development of the Buddhist tradition (e.g., in relation to the issue of reincarnation). Kupperman emphasizes Confucius’s concern with everyday behavior, especially social relations. Thus, Kupperman highlights the importance of self-cultivation in Confucius’s account (especially in relation to Analects 1.15), and briefly explains the Confucian approach toward ritual and music in relation to Plato (47). Kupperman also highlights the role of regret in Confucian self-cultivation (especially in relation to Dao (2012) 11:253–257 DOI 10.1007/s11712-012-9264-3

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About the Authors

Regret and performance uncertainty in consumer repeat choice

The role of regret on consumer choices has been well recognized in risky purchasing contents. Rather than outcome comparison, regret should also be contingent on the extent of consumer expectation uncertainty on performance. To explore this issue, the paper first draws some propositions based on a Bayesian updating model assuming consumer expectation as a kind of distribution. By two experiments, we show that consumers change their choice intention for alternatives with different performance uncertainty even though zero disconfirmation and no regret are experienced. Consumer experience and risk attitude moderate the change pattern.

Decision-related loss: Regret and disappointment

Both affective neuroscience and decision science focus on the role of emotions in decisions. Regret and disappointment are emotions experienced with negative decision outcomes. The present research examines the neural substrates of regret and disappointment as well as the role of regret and disappointment in decision making. Experiment 1 compared the subjective experience of regret and disappointment. Participants selected one of two gambles and received different types of feedback during the outcome phase. Despite identical nominal losses, regret induced a more intense dislike of the outcomes and a stronger desire to switch choices than disappointment. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, Experiment 2 examined the neural correlates of regret and disappointment. Both regret and disappointment activated anterior insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex relative to fixation, with greater activation in regret than in disappointment. In contrast to disappointment, regret also showed enhanced activation in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex. These findings suggest that regret and disappointment, emotions experienced during decision-related loss, share a general neural network but differ in both the magnitude of subjective feelings and with regret activating some regions with greater intensity.

The Role of Regret in Informed Consent

Informed consent to medical procedures tends to be construed in terms of principle-based ethics and one or other form of expected utility theory. These constructions leave problems created by imperfect communication; subjective distress and other emotions; imperfect knowledge and incomplete understanding; complexity, and previous experience or the lack of it. There is evidence that people giving consent to therapy or to research participation act intuitively and assess consequences holistically, being influenced more by the magnitude of outcomes than their probability. People avoid decisions they may regret, but modern regret theory has received little attention in discussions of informed consent. This essay suggests ways in which regret may be acknowledged in the consent process and in the assessment of the information that is an intrinsic part of it.

The Disposition Effect and Individual Investor Decisions: The Roles of Regret and Counterfactual Alternatives

Recent studies have documented a strong tendency for individual investors to delay realizing capital losses, while realizing gains prematurely (Odean [1996], Shefrin and Statman [1985], Weber and Camerer [1996]). This tendency has been termed the "disposition effect." The disposition effect is inconsistent with normative approaches to stock sales, such as those based on tax losses (see, for example, Constantinides [1983]).We surveyed individual investors, and found that more respondents reported regret about holding on to a losing stock too long than about selling a winning stock too soon. This finding suggests that individual investors are consistently engaging in behavior that they have been warned can cost them money and that they regret later.Two additional experiments confirm the disposition effect and the role of regret, and offer evidence about the role of an agent (broker) in the assignment of blame and regret. We show that investor satisfaction and regret are not simply functions of outcome, but are influenced by counterfactual alternatives and the type of action taken (holding versus selling). We suggest that the disposition effect may be highly related to reduction of anticipated regret.

Reconsidering the Relation between Regret and Responsibility

Recently Connolly, Ordóñez, and Coughlan challenged the view that regret is partly determined by perceived responsibility for the regretted outcome [Connolly, T. Ordóñez, L. D., & Coughlan, R. (1997). Regret and responsibility in the evaluation of decision outcomes.Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70, 73–85]. In a series of experiments they manipulated whether actors arrived at an outcome through their own decision or through a “computer assignment” over which they had no influence. This decision agency manipulation did not affect their “regret measure.” We show in two experiments that this null-effect is due to the fact that regret was measured by means of a general happiness assessment. In the present research we replicated the basic design of their experiments and also found no effects of decision agency on the happiness assessment. However, the results showed the predicted effects of decision agency when regret was directly measured. Moreover, a measure of disappointment seemed to indicate the opposite effect: People are more disappointed when a negative outcome is caused by a computer assignment than when caused by their own choice. The role of regret and disappointment in decision making is discussed.