The Role of Regret in Decision-Making: A Developmental Study

Imagine one morning you decide to take catch a bus rather than a train to work, because the bus-stop is closer and it is raining. The bus is delayed in traffic so you miss a meeting, whereas all the trains ran on time that day. The next morning you have to decide again whether to take the train or the bus. What aspects of your previous day's experience determine whether or not you change your decision the next morning? An influential suggestion in psychology is that the emotion of regret plays an important role in situations of this sort, and indeed in many types of decision-making. Typically, the suggestion is that because regret is an unpleasant emotion, people anticipate future regret about any decisions that they may make, and thus choose the option that will minimize regret in the future. Thus, on the first day you regretted your decision to catch the bus, so on the second day you make a different decision because it is less likely to lead to regret. It is because of this potential role in decision-making that regret has been characterized as a functional, or useful, emotion that might lead to better decision-making. This claim can be seen as part of an approach to decision-making that emphasizes the role of emotions rather than merely thinking processes.
How do we know, though, that the emotion of regret itself facilitates decision-making? This project proposes a completely novel way of answering this question: by studying the decision-making of children who do or do not yet experience regret. We have already found evidence that the ability to experience regret starts to emerge around 6 years, and at this age some children are capable of experiencing regret and some are not. We have also found initial evidence of a link between the ability to experience regret about a decision on one day, and switching to making a different, more profitable, decision on a second day. Children who reported regret about the outcome of their decision were much more likely to change their choice the next day than children who did not. The proposed project will build on these promising findings and address a set of important issues.
First, does experiencing regret about a decision outcome really cause better decision-making? We will explore whether the relationship between regret and decision-making is a causal one, e.g., by manipulating the likelihood that regret is experienced and examining the effects of this on decision-making.
Second, is what matters the ability to experience regret about a particular decision, or the ability to anticipate regret in the future? Psychologists have tended to focus on the role of anticipating future regret in decision-making. We think it is likely that the ability to anticipate future regret may emerge at an older age than the ability to experience regret after an outcome, i.e., there may be an age at which children can experience but not yet anticipate regret. If this is the case, then studies with children provide a unique opportunity to examine the role of experiencing versus anticipating regret in decision-making. Thus, we will explore in detail the relationships between decision-making and both experiencing regret and anticipating regret.
Third, we will also focus on the role of experiencing/anticipating regret in two types of decision-making known to be important in development: the ability to delay gratification (choosing a larger reward in the future rather than a smaller one right now), and risky decision-making (choosing a risky option with a small possibility of a large reward rather than a less risky option that is more likely to yield a lesser reward).
We are also proposing that an associated PhD student will examine similar issues using adapted versions of our tasks with patients who have difficulties experiencing or anticipating regret due to brain damage. This will complement our studies with children and help provide a clear picture of the role of regret in decision-making.

There is now broad acknowledgement that regret plays a role in everyday decision making. For example, the role of regret in explaining or predicting health-related behaviours has attracted a great deal of recent interest from researchers and practitioners seeking to optimize preventative behaviours such as vaccination or reduce harmful behaviours such as taking up smoking. Researchers in these areas are beginning to consider what types of interventions may be able to influence these types of behaviour, given the assumption that regret plays a powerful role in determining whether or not they occur. Moreover, there is very recent evidence emerging that suggests problems in experiencing or anticipating regret may occur in the mental illnesses of schizophrenia and depression and may be associated with behavioural dysfunction. Last, in the area of neuroeconomics there is a great deal of interest in how regret may influence economic choices, particularly under conditions in which choices are risky and can lead to financial losses as well as gains. The potential impact of all of these lines of more applied research is clear: understanding the role of regret may lead to more effective interventions or a better understanding of behaviour that is important in everyday life. Thus, it seems highly likely that these lines of research will have a direct impact on practice or policy. While we do not anticipate that the findings of our own research will have this sort of direct impact, we do believe that our findings will speak to the basic assumptions underpinning these strands of research regarding the relationship between regret and decision-making. Thus, our impact plan will necessarily focus on engaging researchers who conduct these more applied lines of research.

We note also that there is a great deal of interest amongst more applied researchers in the development of decision-making because of known associations between decision-making and important developmental outcomes. Much of this research has focused on adolescent decision-making (e.g., seeking to explain, and ultimately intervene on and reduce, risk-seeking behaviour in adolescents). However, some longitudinal studies have also indicated predictive relationships between decision-making in younger children and developmental outcomes. Moreover, numerous studies of developmental disorders, particularly ADHD, have been concerned with examining whether they may be associated with particular styles of decision-making (e.g., difficulty delaying gratification) that may underlie some behavioural problems. We deliberately focus on risky decision-making and delay of gratification in the proposed project because of the practical importance of these types of decision-making highlighted by these lines of applied developmental research. Again, we think that the impact of our research will be maximized through ensuring that these types of applied researchers become aware of our findings.