Quitting (previously published as Mastering the Art of Quitting) (23 page)

Answer that question for yourself, and then consider what Kahneman and Tversky found: A whopping 92 percent of respondents thought that the guy who acted—by selling his Company B stock—would feel more regret than the man who lost the same $1,200 opportunity by inaction (not buying Company B stock).

The result is, of course, strangely counterintuitive since both investors found themselves in precisely the same place—missing out on the same potential $1,200 gain—so why should anyone assume that one investor would feel more regret than the other?
In his book
Thinking, Fast and Slow
, Kahneman explains that “people expect to have stronger emotions (including regret) to an outcome that is produced by action than to the same outcome when it's produced by inaction.” He asserts that the asymmetry is as strong for losses as gains and that it applies to blame as well as regret. He offers an explanation for why: “The key is not the difference between commission and omission but the distinction between default options and actions that deviate from the default. When you deviate from the default, you can easily imagine the norm—and if the default is associated with bad consequences, the discrepancy between the two can be the source of painful emotion.” Among the examples he cites are the players of a computer blackjack game. Taking action—whether it was choosing to hit or stand by saying yes—produced more regret than saying no and doing nothing. Loss aversion ties into regret in his view: “The asymmetry in the risk of regret favors conventional risk-averse choices.”

But this theory was challenged
by a series of later studies by Thomas Gilovic and Victoria Husted Medvec. These studies countered that while Kahneman and Tversky's results were powerful,
they didn't really jibe with common observations about regret, namely, that “when people are asked about their biggest regrets in life, it seems they tend to focus on the things they
failed
to do.” To paraphrase Robert Frost, which do we regret more: the road taken or the one
not
taken?
(The disagreement between Kahneman and Gilovic and Medvec
was later addressed in a paper the three of them published.)

Gilovic and Medvec's findings are fascinating and illuminate how many of the processes of mind already discussed in these pages affect and mediate feelings of regret. They hypothesized that the passage of time affects how we experience regret over actions we've taken and those we haven't; they argued that while people are initially more upset by what they've done, the failure to act induces more regret over time. A broad survey they took confirmed exactly this observation, as well as another interesting one: Twice as many people regretted failures to act, rather than actions they took. Since a very small percentage of regrets focused on circumstances beyond a person's control, the researchers also concluded that a sense of personal responsibility was central to the experience of regret. For example, you would deeply regret that you didn't heed your financial advisor's advice in 2007 to sell off your stock portfolio before the market crashed; conversely, if you had no prior information, you might regret the amount of money you lost, but you wouldn't feel personally responsible.

Gilovic and Medvec conducted experiments to determine the difference between short-term and long-term regrets, offering subjects the following scenario. Two young men, Dave and Jim, both attend the same university, although they're not acquainted. Neither of them is happy, and they both consider transferring to some other prestigious school. They both agonize over the decision, but ultimately, Dave decides to stay and Jim transfers. It turns out that neither is happy with his choice; Dave wishes he'd transferred while Jim wishes he'd stayed put.

Answer the questions respondents were asked as you read: (1) Who would regret his choice the most in the short term? (2) Who would regret his choice the most in the long term?

The answers validated the researchers' hypothesis: 76 percent thought that Jim, who had acted by transferring, would have more short-term regret. But the majority (63 percent) thought that Dave, who did nothing, would regret it more for longer. Most pertinent to our discussion, though, is the framework Gilovic and Medvec propose for understanding why regret shifts over time. Many of their observations dovetail with ideas already encountered in these pages, but are worth reviewing because they help explain how regret works in life and can interfere with disengagement.

Regrettable actions become less painful
because people take compensatory action to help “fix” the past mistake they've made and find “silver linings” that justify the action. People point to the lessons learned from mistakes and failures as part of this process. Similarly, your realization that you married the wrong person might have you file for divorce, but you might nonetheless bring up memories of your courtship and how charming he or she was back then to justify marrying in the first place. Or you offer the ultimate silver lining: “If I hadn't married this person, I wouldn't have had the wonderful kids I have.” Reframing what happened in terms of positives—rationalizing them—is what Daniel Gilbert has, in another context, called
the
psychological immune system
.

While inaction can be reframed in ways that reduce the pain of regret, it's neither effective nor consistent. For one thing, regrettable inactions are much harder to reframe because, in retrospect, it usually seems eminently clear that the reasons you had for not doing whatever it was (not going to that university across country, because you'd lose touch with your old friends; not asking that girl out for a date, because she was bound to reject you; not marrying your college sweetheart, because of your different political beliefs) don't seem to hold water over time. Most of us will dismiss what we once saw as the key and deciding factors that justified what we didn't do with what Gilovic and Medvec call “retrospective confidence”: you could have figured out a way to get home now and again from California; you can't think of a reason she wouldn't have gone out with you; you and your sweetheart would have worked it
out because your love was so strong. Over time, you're more likely to have trouble grasping exactly what your reasons were for not acting at the time, rather than nodding your head in agreement.

While the regret caused by action is finite and mitigated by the retrospective spin, the open-ended nature of inaction—the cinematic quality of “What Might Have Been” and “If Only”—has infinite possibilities, as F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel
The Great Gatsby
makes abundantly clear. The Zeigarnik effect—the way the mind hangs on to uncompleted tasks, nudging us to go finish them—also makes it harder to tamp down the regret caused by inaction.

Regret is a complicated emotion precisely because of its origin in a comparison, which makes it possible to feel regret even when your actions don't result in a bad outcome. That observation has led Terry Connolly and Marcel Zeelenberg to propose
their
decision justification theory
, which posits that regret has two sources, one connected to the comparative evaluation of the outcomes and the other with the self-blame for having made a poor choice. The “poor” choice would be one you find inconsistent with your own standards of behavior and intentions. The point is that you can blame yourself for your choice and feel regret, even in the absence of a bad outcome. The example they give is of
someone who drives home from a party
having had too much to drink. Nothing happens—you make it home without incident—but you still regret what you did, because it's not like you to do something that risky and stupid. Decision justification theory suggests that the feeling that your action or inaction was inconsistent will lead to greater regret than decisions that are inherently consistent with how you think and behave. All of this makes eminent sense. If you are normally a cautious person, an impromptu decision that turns out badly will be regretted more, with a healthy dose of self-blame, than one on which you did your usual due diligence but tanked nonetheless.

Because regret is considered an aversive emotion (it doesn't feel good), human beings are presumed to be motivated to try to regulate it. As you might expect, then,
researchers Todd McElroy and Keith Dows found that action-oriented individuals
—who are
better at regulating their emotions and thus are more skilled at goal disengagement—don't suffer as much regret as their state-oriented brethren. They also found that state-oriented people reported high levels of regret whether the situation involved action or inaction. This observation shouldn't come as a surprise, either, since the state-oriented have trouble managing negative emotion generally, and regret wouldn't be an exception. The action-oriented, in contrast, had low levels of regret, except when they didn't act. That finding underscores how inconsistent behavior factors into regret, while consistent behavior does not.

If you've already identified yourself as either action-oriented or state-oriented, you'll be able to gauge your own ability (or inability) to manage regret and how the anticipation of regret affects both your decision making generally and your ability to quit.

Learning from Regret

While most of the psychological literature assumes that feelings of regret are negative and hence to be avoided,
Colleen Saffrey and her colleagues
took a counterintuitive stance, exploring whether the experience of regret had any psychological benefits and whether ordinary people recognized those benefits. They wondered whether regret could help trigger or guide future behavior toward desirable outcomes. Did the feeling of regret help people make sense of negative experiences in positive ways? Did people view regret as potentially beneficial, aversive, or a combination of the two?

Their first study examined whether individuals valued the experience of regret and whether their seeing a value in that experience was in line with seeing the “bright side” of other negative emotional experiences. The investigators had the participants complete a survey of nine negative emotions (regret, anger, anxiety, boredom, disappointment, fear, guilt, jealousy, and sadness), in addition to four positive emotions (joy, love, pride, and relaxed). Not surprisingly, the four positive emotions were universally viewed as
favorable and beneficial, but in addition, there was a general positivity associated with even negative emotions. The notable exceptions were anxiety, boredom, and jealousy, the last of which was considered unambiguously unfavorable. Both regret and disappointment, however, scored much more favorably than anger, guilt, or sadness, surpassing even pride, a positive emotion—showing that individuals do see a value in regret.

Saffrey and colleagues' second study examined whether the experience of regret might help individuals make sense of situations and guide them to pursue desired outcomes or avoid the status quo. In addition, the researchers looked at whether a negative emotion might impel an individual toward self-examination or other insight, as well as whether a negative emotion might bring him or her closer to other people. (They did not test whether negative emotions actually accomplished these ends, but only tested whether people believed that they did.) Finally, the researchers wondered whether, given that individuals tended to see regret in a positive light, the participants would assess themselves as experiencing more regret than others. This sounds wildly counterintuitive—why would anyone want to believe he or she experienced more regret?—but since, as we've already seen, people tend to see themselves as not only above average but also possessing more positive traits than others, might people exhibit the same self-bias when it came to regret, if they saw regret as a positive, even enlightening experience?

The participants were administered a regret scale
composed of a series of statements. They were told to agree or disagree with each statement, first as they might answer it themselves, and then as a friend might. The statements are interesting in and of themselves and are listed below, so that you can consider them as well. (The statements were originally developed by Barry Schwartz and Andrew Ward and others for another study.)

1. When I make a choice, I'm curious about what would have happened if I had chosen differently.

2. Whenever I make a choice, I try to get information about how other alternatives turned out.

3. If I make a choice and it turns out well, I still feel like something of a failure if I find out another choice would have turned out better.

4. When I think about how I'm doing in life, I often assess possibilities I have passed up.

5. Once I make a decision, I don't look back.

You can see the nuances here; there's a lot of territory between the first statement (being curious) and the fifth (never looking back). If you can, try to locate your own stance somewhere on this list.

The participants were then asked to focus on twelve negative emotions (regret, anger, anxiety, boredom, disappointment, disgust, fear, frustration, guilt, jealousy, sadness, and shame) and had to agree or disagree with two statements about each emotion, rating them in terms of five positive functions: making sense of a situation; informing or motivating an approach to future action; avoiding making the same mistake; personal insight; and improving relationships with, or understanding of, other people.

The researchers discovered that people thought that regret performed all five of these functions, which confirmed the findings of the first study more specifically, that regret is thought to have positive benefits. (It won't surprise you that among the other negative emotions rated, three others—guilt, shame, and disappointment—were also seen as having positive effects on behavior.) Finally, the participants
did
think that they had experienced more regret than a friend. So, perhaps Édith Piaf wasn't in a good place after all when she sang that she had nothing to regret. Sorry, little sparrow.