The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward(11)

The main effect, several studies show, is on our “decision hygiene.”?[5] Leaning into regret improves our decision-making process—because the stab of negativity slows us down. We collect more information. We consider a wider range of options. We take more time to reach a conclusion. Because we step more carefully, we’re less likely to fall through cognitive trapdoors like confirmation bias.[6] One study of CEOs found that encouraging business leaders to reflect on their regrets exerted a “positive influence on their future decisions.”[7]

Barry Schwartz, one of the first social psychologists to take regret seriously, explains that this unpleasant feeling “serves several important functions.” Regret can “emphasize the mistakes we made in arriving at a decision, so that, should a similar situation arise in the future, we won’t make the same mistakes.”[8]

This theme ran through many of the entries in the World Regret Survey, including this one from a parent with a long memory:

    I yelled at my daughter when she was five, on the way to school, when she spilled some yogurt on her uniform. I really laid into her and I have regretted it ever since. She didn’t deserve that. I upset her so much, and for what? A bit of a stain on her uniform? I will never stop regretting that moment. I have never yelled at her in that way again. So I learned from that mistake, but I wish I could take that moment back.



This parent still feels bad about past behavior, but has used that feeling to make different decisions going forward and never scream at the child that way again.

While some of us parents are still trying to improve our decision-making, the capacity for regret might be a fundamental part of how our sons and daughters learn to reason and make decisions themselves. Irish researchers, across several experiments, have shown that children’s decision-making capabilities improve tremendously once they cross the developmental threshold, around age seven, that allows them to experience regret. “The development of regret allows children to learn from previous decisions in order to adaptively switch their choices,” write Eimear O’Connor, Teresa McCormack, and Aidan Feeney.[9]

Our cognitive apparatus is designed, at least in part, to sustain us in the long term rather than balm us in the near term. We need the ability to regret our poor decisions—to feel bad about them—precisely so we can improve those decisions in the future.





2. Regret can boost performance.


Clairvoyants smash egg pools.

That’s an anagram for Psychologists love anagrams. And it’s true. Anagrams are a staple of psychological research. Usher participants into a room. Give them some words or phrases to rearrange into other words or phrases. Then manipulate their mood, their mindset, their environment, or any other variable to see how it affects their performance.

For example, in one experiment, Keith Markman (from one of the negotiation studies) and two colleagues gave participants ten anagrams to solve. After supposedly “grading” the results, they told participants that they’d found only half of the available words. Then they poked people with a little regret. “Close your eyes and think about your actual performance on the anagrams compared to how you might have performed better,” they told the participants. “Take a minute and vividly evaluate your performance in comparison to how you might have performed better.” Their heads now swimming with If Onlys, these puzzle-solvers felt worse—especially compared to another group that had been asked to make At Least comparisons. But on the next round, the regretful group solved more puzzles and stuck with the task longer than anyone else in the experiment.[10] This is one of the central findings on regret: it can deepen persistence, which almost always elevates performance. One of the pioneers in studying counterfactual thinking, Neal Roese, whose research appears throughout these pages and the Notes, used anagrams in one of his earliest and most influential papers. He, too, found that inducing regret—poking participants with If Onlys—enabled people to solve more anagrams and to solve them faster.[11]

Or leave the laboratory and enter the casino. One intriguing experiment, also led by Markman, asked people to play blackjack against a computer. The experimenters told half the participants that after the first round, they’d depart. They told the other half that after the first round, they’d play a few more hands. People who knew they’d be playing again generated many more If Onlys than people who were one-and-done. They were more likely to regret pursuing a flawed card-playing strategy or taking too much or too little risk. The first group, meanwhile, avoided negativity. They mostly generated At Leasts (“At least I didn’t lose all my money!”). But the card players in the second group willingly initiated the unpleasant process of experiencing regret “because they needed preparative information to help them perform better,” the researchers wrote. “Participants who did not expect to play again needed no such information and, instead, wanted only to feel good about their current performance.”?[12]

Even thinking about other people’s regrets may confer a performance boost. Several studies have introduced a character named Jane, who’s attending a concert of her favorite rock band. Jane begins the concert in her ticketed seat, but then moves to another seat to be closer to the stage. A bit later, the band announces that promoters will soon randomly select a seat and give a free trip to Hawaii to whoever is sitting in it. Sometimes participants in this experiment hear that the seat that Jane recently switched to is the one that wins the free trip. Rejoice! Other times participants hear that the seat that Jane left is the one that wins. Regret! People who heard Jane’s If Only saga, and then took a section of the Law School Admission Test, scored 10 percent higher than a control group. They also did a better job of solving complex puzzles like the Duncker candle problem, a famous experimental test of creative thinking.[13] Getting people to think counterfactually, to experience even vicarious regret, seems to “crack open the door to possibilities,” Galinsky (from the negotiation studies) and Gordon Moskowitz explain. It infused people’s subsequent deliberations with more strength, speed, and creativity.