Ahh… regret.
Some people claim they don’t have time for it. “No regrets,” they’ll proclaim proudly.
And yet, even some of these folks, when you get them in a quiet or vulnerable state, they’ll freely admit that there _are _some things they wished they would have done differently.
Even if they say it quickly and add on something like, “But there’s no going back now. The past is the past.”
And aside from these folks, the ones who publicly have no regrets but nurse private ones — there _are _plenty of _other _people who openly regret this or that.
So what sorts of things do people regret the most?
Let’s look into one study that asked that question and found some intriguing answers.
What People Regret the Most #
A 2018 study of regret found that, generally speaking, people’s most frequent regrets stemmed from things they _didn’t _do and wished they had done and _not _things that they had done that they wished they hadn’t.
This is at odds with the general advice that you’re better “safe than sorry.” Researchers believe this is because we tend to feel the pain of regret for an unwise action (like saying or doing something ill advised) immediately — and therefore are able to take some short-term steps to remedy the situation. Conversely, in a situation where we _don’t _take an opportunity, we’re more likely to feel the pain of regret much later, long after we can actually do something about it.
And so the regret persists.
Zooming in a bit further, this current study also found that we regret seizing opportunities that would let us become more like our ideal self.
Self-Discrepancy Theory #
As I mentioned in a previous post, there’s a framework in psychology called self-discrepancy theory. In it, Higgins proposes that there are three basic domains in our self-concept:
- Actual Self. How we perceive ourselves to be already .
- Ideal Self. How we would ideally like to be.
- Ought Self. How we believe _others _would like us to be.
Both the Ideal and Ought Selves focus on our future potential, but the key difference is that Ideal Self tends to revolve around what a person admires in others and has been positively rewarded for in the past.
Conversely, the Ought Self tends to arise based on trying to avoid characteristics or behaviors that a person has been _criticized _for in the past.
And today’s research study tells us that we regret it most when we don’t seize opportunities that let us become more like our ideal self. (Which is something to keep in mind for times when your ideal self and ought self are in conflict.)
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This post is part of an ongoing Poly Land feature called Psyched for the Weekend, in which I geek out with brief takes about some of my favorite psychological studies and concepts. For the entire series, please see this link.