Regret

We apply an autobiographical memory framework to the study of regret. Focusing on the distinction between regrets for specific and general events we argue that the temporal profile of regret, usually explained in terms of the action-inaction distinction, is predicted by models of autobiographical memory. In two studies involving participants in their sixties we demonstrate a reminiscence bump for general, but not for specific regrets. Recent regrets were more likely to be specific than general in nature. Coding regrets as actions/inactions revealed that general regrets were significantly more likely to be due to inaction while specific regrets were as likely to be due to action as to inaction. In Study 2 we also generalised all of these findings to a group of participants in their 40s. We re-interpret existing accounts of the temporal profile of regret within the autobiographical memory framework, and outline the practical and theoretical advantages of our memory-based distinction over traditional decision-making approaches to the study of regret.

Which domains in life produce the greatest potential for regret, and what features of those life domains explain why? Using archival and laboratory evidence, the authors show that greater perceived opportunity within life domains evokes more intense regret. This pattern is consistent with previous publications demonstrating greater regret stemming from high rather than low opportunity or choice. A meta-analysis of 11 regret ranking studies revealed that the top six biggest regrets in life center on (in descending order) education, career, romance, parenting, the self, and leisure. Study Set 2 provided new laboratory evidence that directly linked the regret ranking to perceived opportunity. Study Set 3 ruled out an alternative interpretation involving framing effects. Overall, these findings show that people's biggest regrets are a reflection of where in life they see their largest opportunities; that is, where they see tangible prospects for change, growth, and renewal.

In the manifold excesses of current Anglo-American managerial praxis, from short-term time horizons, grossly distorted expressions of managerial prerogatives and remuneration rationales and a calculated brutality far in excess of any Human Relations sensitivity, the need to inflate shareholder perceptions of the "bottom line" has led to a managerial immorality that staggers many ethical and stakeholders' boundaries. Post Enron, Tyco and others, can much change? Are all senior managers doomed to the moral/ethical vacuum of the "bottom line"? With remuneration packages deliberately focused around an economic-rationalist "brutality," what reflective space, what discourse allows and enables moments of remorse/regret and accommodates the inevitable need for personal accountability and attempts at restitution? Is it merely recourse to recalcitrant legal/governance codes that provides for accounting for managerial incompetence and ideologized greed? How will management discourse remember the current regressive nature of managerial behaviour? How will Knowledge Management, in full flight with rhetoric about the importance of Tacit Knowledge, deal with organizational incompetence?

This experiment examines the effect of option choice framing on short-term regret from actions and inactions, using 124 Singaporean and 96 Thai working adults who add options to a base model (additive framing) or delete options from a full model (subtractive framing) in a condominium purchase scenario. The results qualify past findings, showing that in both cultures, in additive framing, participants anticipate more regret from taking actions (adding options) than inactions, whereas in subtractive framing, they anticipate more regret from taking inactions (not deleting options) than actions. The implications for marketers are as follows. First, in the additive framing condition, to avoid regret consumers may prefer not adding options and hence lower revenues for marketers. Second, in the subtractive framing condition, to avoid regret consumers may prefer deleting options, hence lower revenues for marketers. Third, marketers can minimize consumers' anticipated regret by, for example, allowing consumers to change their mind without any penalty after they have added/deleted options, accelerating them to make decisions so that they have less time or no time to anticipate regret, providing them with a lot of information to process so that they have little cognitive capacity left to anticipate regret, and putting them in a distracting environment (playing loud music, playing movies, and providing snacks/foods).

Resumo As reações afetivas que os consumidores experimentam em um processo de compra têm a maioria dos seus estudos voltada para a satisfação do consumidor. Contudo, emoções negativas, como o arrependimento, são de extrema importância, embora pouco estudadas. Dessa maneira, o presente trabalho tem dois objetivos, além de colaborar para o desenvolvimento da literatura, também o de verificar se o esforço empreendido pelo consumidor no processo de busca de informações influencia o seu grau de arrependimento, ao mesmo tempo que analisa a relação da intensidade do arrependimento com futuras intenções de reclamação, divulgação a terceiros (boca-a-boca negativo) e recompra. Os resultados com a amostra composta de adolescentes sugerem que: a busca de informação não influencia a intensidade do arrependimento; a probabilidade de boca-a-boca negativo e reclamação aumentam juntamente com a intensidade do arrependimento; e, as pessoas com alto grau de arrependimento tendem a não efetuar a recompra. Quando a amostra é estratificada pelo gênero, evidencia-se que a hipótese de quanto maior a intensidade do arrependimento, maior a probabilidade de reclamação, é confirmada para o sexo masculino e rejeitadas para o sexo feminino.

Investors, like any decision maker, feel regret when they compare the outcome of an investment with what the outcome would have been had they invested differently. We argue and show that this counterfactual comparison process is most likely to take place when the decision maker's expectations are violated. Across five scenario experiments we found that decision makers were influenced only by forgone investment outcomes when the realized investment fell short of the expected result. However, when their investments exceeded prior expectations, the effect of foregone investment on regret disappeared. In addition, Experiment 4 found that individual differences in the need to maximize further moderated the effects of their expectations, such that maximizers always take into account the forgone investment. The final experiment found that when probed to make counterfactual comparisons, also investments that exceed expectations may lead to regret. Together these experiments reveal insights into the comparative processes leading to decision regret.

In this paper, we examine inaction inertia in a social context where the decision-maker is among others who are faced with similar current and past opportunities. We specifically investigate whether the likelihood of taking advantage of a current opportunity after having missed a previous, relatively superior opportunity depends on whether a referent other did or did not take advantage of the previous opportunity. We report results from three studies that provide evidence for the interplay between the past actions and inactions of a referent other and the extent of inaction inertia displayed by a focal decision-maker. We also show that the proximity of the other and the valence of the relationship between the decision-maker and the other influence the extent to which the decision of the other impacts the likelihood to take action. And, finally, we show that regret mediates the relationship between the decision of the other with respect to the past opportunity and the decision-maker's likelihood of taking advantage of the current opportunity.

To evaluate the cumulative probability of regret after tubal sterilization, and to identify risk factors for regret that are identifiable before sterilization. Methods: We used a prospective, multicenter cohort study to evaluate the cumulative probability of regret within 14 years after tubal sterilization. Participants included 11,232 women aged 18-44 years who had tubal sterilizations between 1978 and 1987. Actuarial life tables and Cox proportional hazards models were used to identify those groups at greatest risk of experiencing regret. Results: The cumulative probability of expressing regret during a follow-up interview within 14 years after tubal sterilization was 20.3% for women aged 30 or younger at the time of sterilization and 5.9% for women over age 30 at sterilization (adjusted relative risk [RR] 1.9; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.6, 2.3). For the former group, the cumulative probability of regret was similar for women sterilized during the postpartum period (after cesarean, 20.3%, 95% CI 14.5, 26.0; after vaginal delivery, 23.7%, 95% CI 17.6, 29.8) and for women sterilized within 1 year after the birth of their youngest child (22.3%, 95% CI 16.4, 28.2). For women aged 30 or younger at sterilization, the cumulative probability of regret decreased as time since the birth of the youngest child increased (2-3 years, 16.2%,

The author examines the influence of experienced regret on the selection of the reference point used in post-choice valuation. He incorporates two reference points, expected performance and performance of the forgone alternative, the former affecting the amount of satisfaction and the latter affecting the amount of regret experienced by a decision maker. Prior research on regret has assumed only a two-alternative choice set with the forgone alternative being the reference point for measuring regret. The author relaxes that assumption and develops hypotheses to examine the selection of the reference point in cases that more closely represent real-life experience (i.e., choice sets with more than two alternatives). Two studies are reported. The results from the first study support most of the hypotheses. The second study further investigated the selection of a reference point. Several theoretical and managerial implications are discussed and future research directions are suggested. ᭧

The mind is an anticipatory device. Its main purpose is to ‘produce future’, telling us not only how the world might or will be, but also how it should be, or better how we would like it to be. Expectancies shape our lives: they impact on our actual outcomes, often acting as self-fulfilling prophecies. They also constitute a reference point for establishing whether an outcome is a loss or a gain; that is, we evaluate our own outcomes not in absolute terms, but against our expectancies. And we feel ill-treated and betrayed when our expectancies are disappointed.
This book addresses anticipation-based emotions, that is, the emotions associated with the dialectical interaction between ‘what is’ and ‘what is not (yet)’, be it a mere wished-for possibility or an expectation proper. It offers an anatomy of both the emotions implying anticipations of future events – such as fear, anxiety, hope, and trust – and those elicited by the disconfirmation of a previous anticipation – surprise, disappointment, discouragement, sense of injustice, regret, and relief – in terms of their belief and goal components. It also addresses anticipated emotions, that is, emotions we foresee we might experience in future circumstances, and explores how they influence our decisions.
The reader will be taken on a journey of exploration and discovery into the multifarious facets and implications of an important family of emotions, aimed at understanding what they have in common, as well as the distinguishing features of each distinct emotion, and predicting their motivational and behavioral consequences.

This paper examines in detail David Benatar’s asymmetry argument for his thesis that it would have been better for all people not to have begun to exist. Confused attempts to construe the thesis itself are dismissed, including some by Benatar himself (1). A more fitting reading is proposed: in all people self-regret due to one’s own coming into existence would be adequate (2). Benatar’s basic asymmetry of harms and benefits is accepted as a mere truism (3). The lack of any articulate transition from the asymmetry to the thesis on Benatar’s side is exposed. Although the transition is reconstructed from hints provided by
him, it is found wanting (4). Finally, the novelty of the asymmetry argument is highlighted.

Some emotional states are complex enough to serve as interesting, sufficient conditions for personhood. Regret is presented as such a case, as it fulfills standard criteria for personhood, such as self-consciousness, continuity of memory, reflective judgment, narrative sense of self, judgment, moral consideration, care, and second-order volitions. Regret is especially interesting in that it secures some degree of identity across time and is not only a mark of identity, but an identity-making emotion. That is, regret alters how we think of ourselves and establishes both a relation between past and present selves and an attitude towards future selves. By virtue of regretting, we put forward that we were a certain person, that we hold a (negative) judgment about that person, and that we would, if possible, choose to be a different person in the future. Thus, continuity across time, and the creation of character are united in regret, bringing together diverse strands of the personhood and identity debate, and establishing further that an emotional attitude may be a necessary and sufficient condition for personhood. Further, the capacity for regret a necessary condition. An entity that was incapable of regret would be a person in a reduced sense. It may well be that by happenstance or accident there is a human who never does anything regrettable. But if such a human did do something regrettable, but could simple shrug it off with no sense of regret or remorse, we would think them deficient just as we find the sociopath deficient, or the person incapable of love. If we accept that personhood is a success concept, as Dennett seems to, then perhaps we have not succeeded without the capacity to feel bad for what we have done when we have done wrong. As Williams points out, there is something wrong with the truck driver who does not regret the accident that killed the child.

This study investigated the impact of emotion expectancies on adolescents' moral decision making in hypothetical situations. The sample consisted of 160 participants from three different grade levels (mean age = 15.79 years, SD = 2.96). Participants were confronted with a set of scenarios that described various emotional outcomes of (im)moral actions and needed to decide what they would do if they were in the protagonist's shoes. Findings demonstrate that emotion expectancies differentially influenced adolescents' hypothetical decision making in antisocial versus prosocial behavioral contexts. Whereas negatively charged self-evaluative emotions over failing to act morally (e.g., guilt) were the strongest predictor for moral choice in antisocial behavioral contexts, positively charged self-evaluative emotions over acting morally (e.g., pride) most strongly predicted moral choice in prosocial contexts. Older adolescents paid greater attention to outcome-oriented emotions that make the decision to act morally less attractive (e.g., regret). Overall, the study suggests that emotion expectancies influence moral decision making in unique and meaningful ways.

This article deals with critical psychic transformation in a schizoid personality disorder that evolves in an object relations psychoanalysis in which "developmental mourning" plays a central role. Within a mourning process that allows for the grieving of loss related to arrested separation-individuation development, the analysand confronts the existential grief of regret that had always unconsciously haunted her. The unconscious guilt related to the existential grief of regret had caused much dissociation of self-experience and affect states. The analysand acknowledges her own part in the destruction of primal and current relationships after the traumatic impact of her early life is understood. This allows her to repair current relationships, both within her internal and external worlds so that she can open to capacities for love and creativity. The analysand's courage to consciously grapple with her regret (loss and guilt combined) allows her to relinquish self-sabotaging character defenses such as contempt and emotional withdrawl. Consequently, a second marriage is salvaged and enriched, and the analysand's relationship with her two children is dramatically improved.

#Regretting Motherhood thematizes what has been hardly ever spoken out up to now: That numerous women do not find the demanded satisfaction in motherhood. The book analyses the dimension of the taboo and the various roots of society's denial of the existence of mothers who regret.

In recent years, the field of decision making has benefitted greatly from a renewed interest in how people face choices involving uncertain outcomes. Decision Making: Descriptive, Normative, and Prescriptive Interactions is a collection of outstanding articles that addresses the general topic of decision making from three different perspectives: (1) how people make decisions, (2) how "rational" people should make decisions, and (3) how less rational people, who aspire to rationality, might do better. The book brings together these different approaches to decision making, summarizes ongoing work in the field, and synthesizes research in the different areas.

A central question of human psychology is whether and when people change for the better. Although it has long been assumed that emotion plays a central role in self-regulation, the role of specific emotions in motivating a desire for self-change has been largely ignored. We report 2 studies examining people’s lived experiences of self-conscious emotions, particularly shame, in motivating a desire for self-change. Study 1 revealed that when participants recalled experiences of shame, guilt, or embarrassment, shame—and, to some degree, guilt—predicted a motivation for self-change. Study 2 compared shame, guilt, and regret for events and found that although shame experiences often involved high levels of both regret and guilt, it was feelings of shame that uniquely predicted a desire for self-change, whereas regret predicted an interest in mentally undoing the past and repairing harm done. Implications for motivating behavior change are discussed.gree guilt predicted a motivation for self-change. Study 2 compared shame, guilt, and regret for events and found that although shame experiences often involved high levels of both regret and guilt, it was feelings of shame that uniquely predicted a desire for self-change, whereas regret predicted an interest in mentally undoing the past and repairing harm done. Implications for motivating behavior change are discussed.

Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya)

Occasionally a person faces various physical and spiritual sorrows and troubles in the world. Amongst these are feelings so intense that they cannot be compared with any other physical pain. This feeling that causes such great distress in the human soul is a feeling called "regret."

There are two completely different forms of regret, however. The regret felt by people of faith and the regret that non-believers experience. These two feelings are extremely different from one another.

Believers are the people who have an absolute faith in the fact that events take place by Allah's Will, and whatever befalls them does so by Allah's Will. This explains their all-important distinctive attribute of putting their unyielding trust in Allah, at good times, in trouble or when they make a mistake. Upon making a mistake, a believer immediately repents with sincerity and hopes for Allah's forgiveness. As a result, he does not suffer from a distressful and long-lived feeling of regret. The regret felt by believers urges them to ask for repentance, to purify themselves and prevents them from repeating this error. It helps them rectify their errors and prevents them from plunging into a distressful and pessimistic mood. Moreover, this regret does not reduce their enthusiasm, devotion, or religious zeal nor does it drag them downward into a spiral of apprehension and depression.

Regret felt by unbelievers, on the other hand, is very distressing and long-lasting, as they do not put their trust in Allah when they encounter a difficulty or commit a transgression. Throughout their lives, they often use phrases like "I wish I had not done this..." "I wish I had never said this...," and so on.

More importantly, they are subject to a much greater regret in the hereafter. Those who lived a life apart from the religion (deen) in this world will regret every misguided moment of their lives. They were warned before and invited to the straight path. They had enough time to contemplate and embrace the right way. Yet they did not listen when they were warned, ignoring the hereafter as if they would never die. Then in the hereafter, they will have no possibility to get back to this world and correct their errors. In the Qur'an, Allah relates their regretful expressions as follows:

We have warned you of an imminent punishment on the Day when a man will see what he has done, and the unbeliever will say, "Oh, if only I were dust!" (Surat an-Naba, 40)

If only you could see when they are standing before the Fire and saying, "Oh! If only we could be sent back again, we would not deny the Signs of our Lord and we would be among the believers." (Surat al-An'am, 27)

They will say, "If only we had really listened and used our intellect, we would not have been Companions of the Blaze." (Surat al-Mulk, 10)

Based on in-depth interviews with twenty-three Israeli mothers, this article seeks to contribute to an ongoing inquiry into women’s subjective experiences of mothering by addressing an understudied maternal emotive and cognitive stance: regretting motherhood. The literature teaches us that within a pronatal monopoly, threatening women that they will inevitably regret not having children acts as powerful reproducer of the ideology of motherhood. Simultaneously, motherhood is constructed as a mythical nexus that lies outside and beyond the human terrain of regret, and therefore a desire to undo the maternal experience is conceived as an object of disbelief. By incorporating regret into maternal experiences, the purpose of the article is twofold: The first is to distinguish regret over motherhood from other conflictual and ambivalent maternal emotions. Whereas participants’ expressions of regretting motherhood were not bereft of ambivalence, and thus were not necessarily exceptional or anomalous, they foreground a different emotive and cognitive stance toward motherhood. The second purpose is to situate regret over motherhood in the sociopolitical arena. It has been suggested that the “power of backward thinking” might be used to reflect on the systems of power governing maternal feelings in two ways: first, through a categorical distinction in the target of regret between object (the children) and experience (maternity), which utilizes the cultural structure of mother love; second, by opposing the very essentialist presumption of a fixed female identity that naturally befits mothering or progressively adapts to it and evaluates it as a worthwhile experience.

Based on in-depth interviews with 23 Israeli–Jewish women who regret becoming mothers, this article seeks to broaden the body of knowledge that challenges Western contemporary discourses that tend to move within the range of two poles: “you have no choice” and “you are totally free to choose." The article suggests that the emotional stance of regret may serve as a lens through which we can view, from a different angle, the interplay between subjectivity, agency, and social order. It calls into question the ‘no-choice/choice’ binary by looking into other notions in the field of reproduction and motherhood, such as ‘will,’ ‘desire,’ ‘orientations’ and ‘consent’. In addition, it is suggested that the inclusion of regretting motherhood in the human terrain of regret and the inclusion of regret in the human terrain of motherhood, meaning, in the subjective repertoire of mothers' experiences, enable us to view regret as “after the fact” agency.

Drawing on user-generated threads from Reddit as a data source, symbolic interactionism and qualitative thematic analysis were used to investigate how, specifically, parents communicate regret in relation to having children. Two fundamental categories of regret were identified. In the more common category of regretting certain circumstances associated with having children, parents emphasized that they did not regret their children but regretted one or more conditions of having children, including (a) timing, (b) number, (c) sacrifice, (d) partner, and (e) the external world. The less common category of regretting having children stemmed from (a) difficult children, (b) self as bad parent, (c) parenthood disdain, and (d) childfree desire. These parents articulated that if they could go back in time, they would not have had children. Conversations in online forums like Reddit legitimize regret as a unique emotion of parenthood, which defy the social and emotional norms of motherhood and fatherhood roles.

This thesis explores the demand for family planning (FP) in the region and demonstrates that just at the time that demand takes off the brain drain and economic situation make it unlikely that the required services will be provided. This, increasingly, results in unsafe abortions. FP in Zimbabwe is overwhelmingly based on the pill (little effort of health workers needed)

Though indecisiveness is associated with several mental disorders and a range of problematic psychological outcomes in normal populations, it is still poorly understood. We distinguish two features of indecisiveness: (a) aversive, a generalized aversion for decisions that manifests as threat-oriented cognition and negative affect when making decisions, and (b) avoidant, a generalized motivation to avoid decisions and to experience difficulties making decisions. Using exploratory (Study 1) and confirmatory (Study 2) factor analyses, we show that the Indecisiveness Scale (Frost & Shows, 1993) possesses factors reflecting these two features. Moreover, we use correlation and regression to test hypotheses regarding the relationships among these components of indecisiveness and regret proneness, maximization, and BIS and BAS sensitivities. Results suggest the utility of distinguishing aversive from avoidant indecisiveness as well as characterizing stable attitudes towards decisions in terms of basic personality processes.

Suggested citation: Pullen Sansfaçon, A., Gelly,M.A., Médico,D., Baril,A. Paradis,A. Gravel R. and Ait Abdelmalek, I. (2022) Talking with youth who discontinued their transition: Their feelings and perspectives about the journey of transition and detransition (2). Canada Research Chair on Transgender Children and their Families. URL: https://jeunestransyouth.ca/en/resultats/new-infographic-talking-with-youth-who-discontinued-their-transition-their-feelings-and-perspectives-about-the-journey-of-transition-and-detransition/

We investigated whether regret predicted the motivation to act heroically. In a series of studies, we examined the relationship between regret, search for meaning in life, and heroism motivation. First, Study 1 (a and b) investigated the association between regret and search for meaning in life, considering regret as a whole, action regret, and inaction regret. As expected, regret correlated positively with search for meaning in life. In two additional studies (Study 2 and 3), we examined whether regret predicted heroism motivation and whether this effect was mediated through search for meaning in life. Study 2 confirmed this hypothesis for individual differences in regret, using a correlational design. Study 3 confirmed the hypothesis for temporary experiences of regret, using an experimental design. In addition, in Study 3 we found that heroism motivation was stronger for people with high self-enhancement needs than for those with lower self-enhancement needs. We discuss the relationship between regret and heroism in light of these results and explore their implications.

Philosophy has long been concerned with 'moral status'. Discussions about the moral status of children, however, seem often to promote confusion rather than clarity. Using the creation of 'savior siblings' as an example, this paper provides a philosophical critique of the moral status of children and the moral relevance of parenting and the role that formative experience, regret and relational autonomy play in parental decisions. We suggest that parents make moral decisions that are guided by the moral significance they attach to children, to sick children and most importantly, to a specific sick child (theirs). This moral valorization is rarely made explicit and has generally been ignored by both philosophers and clinicians in previous critiques. Recognizing this, however, may transform not only the focus of bioethical discourse but also the policies and practices surrounding the care of children requiring bone marrow or cord blood transplantation by better understanding the values at stake behind parental decision making.

The present study investigated how age and gender affect risk taking ability of the investors in their financial decisions through psychological biases such as loss aversion and regret. A total of 450 investors (372 Males, 93 Females) of two age groups (25-40 years and 41-55 years) from northern part of India participated in the study. Conceptual framework was formulated and tested using AMOS 20 to understand the relationship of age, gender and risk taking ability through loss aversion and regret. The results supported our proposed hypotheses. Main results have confirmed the proposed model of analysis, pointing that the impact of age, gender on risk taking ability operates through behavioral biases (loss aversion and regret) of the investors.

Regret is a deeply contested emotion within abortion discourse. It is present in ways that we are both afraid of and afraid to talk about. Conventional pro-life and pro-choice narratives link regret to defective decision making. Both sides assert that the existence of regret reveals abortion’s harmfulness or harmlessness, generating a narrow focus on the maternal-fetal relationship and women’s “rights.” These incomplete, deeply flawed constructions mire discourse in a clash between regret and relief and exclude myriad relevant relationships. Moreover, they distort popular understandings of abortion that in turn influence women, creating cognitive dissonance and perhaps distress for those with different lived experiences of abortion.
Finally, these portrayals contribute to the silence and stigma surrounding
abortion.

This Article contends that regret is more suggestive of women’s
deep reflection on the abortion decision and respect for the fetal relationship
than of flawed decision making—signifying autonomy, not victimization. It explains why we view regret as an outcome of deficient decision making, how this conception misrepresents regret and confuses it with remorse, and why it prompts liberals and conservatives alike to devalue women’s autonomy. This Article charts a course for reconceptualizing and ultimately decentering regret by discussing several common missteps in current constructions: (1) conflating regret with psychopathology, (2) confusing regret with remorse, (3) confining regret to the maternal-fetal relationship and women’s self-commitment, (4) linking regret to deficient decision making, and (5) coupling regret and moral culpability. Finally, this Article discusses how correcting these errors reprioritizes autonomy and profoundly impacts abortion regulation.

An essay of discussion and interpretation of the Emotions of the Biblical God, such as love, anger, sorrow, repent, compassion, hope… How to handle not only fitting passions but also unfitting ones, which are attributed to God in Biblical narratives? The investigation is rooted in Hosea, Augustine, Ps.-Dionysius, and Aquinas, in dialogue with contemporary trends of psychology, literary tools, and Biblical theologies.

In recent years, the field of decision making has benefitted greatly from a renewed interest in how people face choices involving uncertain outcomes. Decision Making: Descriptive, Normative, and Prescriptive Interactions is a collection of outstanding articles that addresses the general topic of decision making from three different perspectives: (1) how people make decisions, (2) how "rational" people should make decisions, and (3) how less rational people, who aspire to rationality, might do better. The book brings together these different approaches to decision making, summarizes ongoing work in the field, and synthesizes research in the different areas.

This paper explores the arising of regret using threads of Buddhist thinking and that of Gadamerian hermeneutics. It critiques constructivism and gives pause over ecological Romanticism. It is partially biographical regarding my impending retirement.

In this paper, I argue that regret should be considered one of the reactive emotions insofar as it is a self-reactive attitude. First, I consider what it is for something to be a reactive attitude. I contend that reactive attitudes are emotions towards a subject concerning the subject’s responsibility for something of normative import (but not necessarily of moral import). In the case of regret, I argue, the subject responds to herself as responsible for something (possibly or actually) sub-optimal. In addition, regret is distinguished from other emotions like shame in that regret always involves some desire (even if only a faint one) to have behaved differently. The first condition is the condition of responsibility; the second is that of revision. Emotion theorists routinely exclude one or both of these conditions when describing regret. I think that this is a mistake. First, it is widely accepted that remorse is a reactive attitude whereby one feels responsible for some negative outcome of their actions and, as a result, wishes to right the wrong. In addition, remorse is often considered a species of the larger class, regret. If regret is not itself a reactive attitude, the burden is on the opposition to explain how this can be so while remorse is a reactive attitude. Second, I argue that the explanation cannot be simply that remorse involves responsibility and revision whereas regret does not, because all previous descriptions of regret absent these conditions are inadequate. I show this by illustrating the criteria laid out by scholars and providing counter-examples to these descriptions. The counter-examples satisfy the criteria given by emotion theorists who deny the two criteria I wish to add, and these examples are clearly instances of other emotions (and not instances of regret). From here, I acknowledge that, by adding the two criteria and considering regret a reactive attitude, there are some cases commonly referred to as regret that will be excluded. I argue that such instances are rightfully excluded, and that our reference to regret in such instances is metaphorical, hyperbolic, or simply mistaken. Finally, I review recent findings in neuroscience (mainly various instances of fMRI studies) that suggest regret does indeed involve some sense of responsibility and a desire for revision.

In three studies, it is shown that most subjects when asked to guess the outcome of an uncertain event (a die toss, the sex of a child, the winner of a match) will prefer to d o so before the event. This holds regardless of consequences of the guess, or of variations in waiting time from the guess being made to the outcome being known.

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.

Increasingly, visual artists, writers and musicians are using social media to enable participation in their art projects (PostSecret (Warren 2004-2014, We Feel Fine (Kamvar & Harris 2005-2014, and the Virtual Choir project (Whitacre 2009(Whitacre -2014). However, recent literature has addressed the use of social media to 'self-present' or to construct idealised and unrealistic virtual identities (Lanier 2010; Marche 2012; Turkle 2012). The question of whether people can, or want to, use social media platforms for authentic self-expression is an important one for crowdsourced art projects, especially those projects that purport to explore the human condition. The creative project, 1000 Tears, approaches this question from a practice-based orientation. We invited expressions of regret from the general public to see whether they would choose to participate via Facebook, SMS or postcard. We collected these regrets in a database that enabled us to analyse the regrets against a number of criteria, principally the mode of interaction and the theme of the regret. This database aligns with the literature on the topic of regret, which reports self-blame and self-harm to be common features of this emotion. We conclude that the participants in the project did not want to share their genuine life regrets via Facebook, rather they preferred to express themselves via the anonymity of a postcard.

As with other cognitively determined emotional experiences, regret is shaped by and expressed in a particular cultural milieu. However, past research on regret has primarily been conducted in Western cultures, especially the United States, and cross-cultural research has been limited. In three studies, we employed various methods (survey, social media data, and experiment) to examine how regret is experienced differently in South Korea (a collectivistic culture) and in the United States (an individualistic culture). We discovered that regret experiences were dependent on the life domain in the collectivistic culture-individuals in this culture were more likely to be prevention-oriented and regretful about actions (what they have done) in social domains but more promotion-oriented and regretful about inactions (what they have failed to do) in personal domains. In comparison, those in the individualistic culture were more likely to regret inactions regardless of life domains, a tendency associated with a promotion focus.

The influence of emotions on decision making is widely accepted, particularly in relation to incidental emotions and moods. The influence of specific emotions integral to a decision is, perhaps, less explored. Explanations of many behavioral anomalies exist that exclude such emotions as important elements, but this may be an oversight-might it be that specific emotions are necessary causes for such behaviors rather than merely playing a supporting role? In this paper we investigate this issue experimentally, using as an example a robust behavioral anomaly in the finance area: the disposition effect, which is generally explained in terms of prospect theory. By manipulating the emotions evoked by an investment task in five studies we show that specific emotional responses are necessary causes of this effect. We provide evidence, therefore, that the specific emotions associated with tasks may play a more important role than previously recognized in some behavioral anomalies.

Pre-published version of book review in _Contemporary Political Theory_ (Vol 18, Issue 3, _Contemporary Political Theory_, Palgrave Macmillan)

Brian Price’s new book—an inspiring exhortation to embrace regret as a political posture—features an unlikely starring cast. There is an infamous war criminal; a customer seeking answers about a billing error; an academic advisee; and a drifter who, in cahoots with his girlfriend, kills her husband. These cautionary characters all had the opportunity to express, and to feel, regret—and yet carried on in Édith Piafian defiance.