The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward(9)

The other variety are known as “upward counterfactuals.” With upward counterfactuals, we imagine how things could have gone better. They make us say “If only . . .”—as in, “If only I’d attended class more often and done all the reading, I’d have gotten a much better grade.” Let’s call these counterfactuals If Onlys.

When researchers reviewed competitors’ post-event television interviews, they found the bronze medalists happily humming At Leasts. “At least I didn’t finish fourth. At least I got a medal!” Silver medalists, though, were wracked with If Onlys. And that hurt. “Second place is only one step away from the cherished gold medal and all of its attendant social and financial rewards,” Medvec and her colleagues wrote. “Thus, whatever joy the silver medalist may feel is often tempered by tortuous thoughts of what might have been had she only lengthened her stride, adjusted her breathing, pointed her toes, and so on.”[2]

The idea that people who finish higher feel worse is provocative—the sort of alluring discovery that captures headlines and enraptures social media. For the last decade, social science has contended with what some have called a “replication crisis.”?[3] Many findings, especially those that seem most surprising and newsworthy, don’t hold up on closer examination. When other scholars rerun the experiments, they often don’t produce the same tantalizing results, calling into question the validity of the earlier findings.

But the Medvec-Gilovich-Madey study has been replicated. Even its replications have been replicated. For example, David Matsumoto of San Francisco State University assembled about 21,000 photographs from the men’s and women’s judo competitions at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, a massive photo set that represented 84 athletes from 35 countries. Regardless of the national origin or ethnicity of the athletes, the difference in facial expression among the medalists was striking. During the podium ceremonies, the gold medalists were almost all smiling widely (what’s called a “Duchenne smile”). So, too, were most of the bronze medalists. The silver medalists? Not so much. They smiled only one-fourth as much as their counterparts.[4]

In 2020, William Hedgcock of the University of Minnesota and Andrea Luangrath and Raelyn Webster of the University of Iowa went further. They collected photos of 413 athletes from 142 sports and 67 countries over five separate Olympic Games. But instead of asking other people to evaluate the athletes’ facial expressions, as in previous studies, they used Emotient, computer software that encodes facial expressions automatically. (The program allowed researchers to scrutinize more expressions more quickly, free of any potential bias from human examiners.) Once again, the results held. Gold medalists smiled the most. But bronze medalists smiled much more than silver medalists. “[T]hose who were objectively better off nonetheless felt worse,” the paper’s authors noted.[5]

I’ve watched that 2016 Rio road race several times. In the minutes after it ended, it’s easy to see the solace of At Least and the sting of If Only. Borghini, the bronze medalist, looked jubilant. She hopped off her bike, loped toward a group of friends and family, and embraced each one. “Elisa Borghini is absolutely delighted with a medal at the Olympic Games!” the announcers cried.

Johansson, meanwhile, huddled quietly with her husband, her affect flat, as the announcers offered their own upward counterfactual. “Another fifty or one hundred meters, and she might have got out over the top,” they speculated. It was a moment of “mixed emotions” for her, they explained. “A silver medalist once again.” Indeed, Johansson had won the silver in the same event during the 2008 Olympics. (She didn’t compete in the 2012 games because of an injury.) She’d finished second in several other races, too, earning her a nickname in the cycling world that she never embraced—Silver Emma. “She’s ‘Silver Emma,’?” Johansson’s mother told Swedish television after the finish. “I think she’s happy, but she wanted gold.”?[6]

If only.





THE PARADOX OF PAIN AND THE PAIN OF PARADOX


At Leasts make us feel better. “At least I ended up with a medal—unlike that American rider who blew it in the final seconds of the race and never reached the podium.” “I didn’t get that promotion, but at least I wasn’t fired.” At Leasts deliver comfort and consolation.

If Onlys, by contrast, make us feel worse. “If only I’d begun that final chase two seconds earlier, I’d have won a gold medal.” “If only I’d taken a few more stretch assignments, I’d have gotten that promotion.” If Onlys deliver discomfort and distress.

It would seem, therefore, that we humans would favor the first category—that we’d choose the warmth of At Least over the chill of If Only. After all, we’re built to seek pleasure and to avoid pain—to prefer chocolate cupcakes to caterpillar smoothies and sex with our partner to an audit with the tax man.

But the truth is different. You’re much more likely to have a Silver Emma moment than a Bronze Borghini one. When researchers have tracked people’s thoughts by asking them to keep daily diaries or by pinging them randomly to ask what’s on their mind, they’ve discovered that If Onlys outnumber At Leasts in people’s lives—often by a wide margin.[7] One study found that 80 percent of the counterfactuals people generate are If Onlys. Other research puts the figure even higher.[8] The main exception are situations in which we’ve eluded calamity. For instance, one study of tourists who witnessed a deadly tsunami but managed to escape found that, several months later, they generated ten At Least comparisons for every If Only. These people didn’t feel aggrieved for being exposed to a natural disaster; they felt lucky for surviving it.[9] In a sense, that’s also the experience of the bronze medalists, who avoided the far less devastating catastrophe of being denied an Olympic medal. But in our day-to-day experiences, those quotidian moments that form most of human existence, we’re much more likely to conjure If Onlys when we ponder what might have been. That’s how our brains and minds work.