Regret,Remorse and the Twilight Perspective

I examine the ‘momentous’ choices that one makes early in life – about career or spouse, for example – and I ask what it means to regret such choices at the end of one’s life (in one’s twilight). I argue that such regrets are almost meaningless because of the difficulty of imaginatively accessing a much earlier self. I then contrast long-term regret to remorse, and argue that the two are qualitatively different experiences because remorse involves another person as victim.     

Hot as hell! The self-conscious nature of action regrets

Gilovich, Medvec, and Kahneman (1998) have shown that real-life regrets for actions and inactions correspond to different emotional states. When people regret something they have done they experience painful “hot” emotions such as disgust or guilt, whereas when the regret is about a failure to act they rather experience wistful emotions. In four questionnaire studies, we have tested the hypothesis that regrettable actions elicit a particular subcategory of these hot emotions: the self-conscious emotions (i.e., guilt, shame, embarrassment, remorse, and anger toward oneself). These studies used different methodologies and all converged to show that self-conscious emotions were the only hot emotions to be systematically greater for action regrets than for inaction regrets. A similar pattern was observed for judgments of responsibility and morality. We emphasize the theoretical and methodological implications of these results in the discussion.     

When Should we Regret?

In this paper, I develop and defend the ‘Justified Decision Perspective’ (JDP) in answer to the question of when we should regret the things we have done. I claim that one should not regret a past decision one has made so long as it was justified in relation to the kind of person one was at the time of acting. On this time-indexing account, judging a decision to be justified – at least for the purposes of assessing one’s regrets – is a matter of identifying the practical reasons that were epistemically available to the agent when she was deliberating about what to do. Accordingly, when responding to her regrets, an agent should not invoke (a) reasons that existed but were epistemically unavailable to her when she was deliberating; or (b) reasons that only came into existence after she acted. The JDP has important implications for prospective regret. In particular, it implies we should worry less about experiencing regret in the future than many of us do. Thus, my overall aim is to show that we often have reason to reject our regrets, which means that regret should play a less prominent and painful role in our lives than it does currently.     

后悔内容的影响因素研究：基于中美的初步比较

后悔内容的研究由于缺乏理论总结长期处于后悔研究的主流之外。Roese和Summerville（2005）通过元分析发现美国人的后悔出现在12个生活领域,在此基础上,他们提出解释后悔内容的机会理论,该理论的核心观点是机会导致了后悔。而Beike、Markman和Karadogan（2009）的观点刚好相反,他们认为失去的机会才会产生后悔。我们将中国人的后悔和美国人的后悔进行比较后,发现中国人后悔出现的生活领域和美国人既有相似性也有差异。该结果提示,除了（失去的）机会之外生活领域的重要性可能也是解释后悔内容的一个重要因素     

What we regret most... and why

Which domains in life produce the greatest potential for regret, and what features of those life domains explain why? Using archival and laboratory evidence, the authors show that greater perceived opportunity within life domains evokes more intense regret. This pattern is consistent with previous publications demonstrating greater regret stemming from high rather than low opportunity or choice. A meta-analysis of 11 regret ranking studies revealed that the top six biggest regrets in life center on (in descending order) education, career, romance, parenting, the self, and leisure. Study Set 2 provided new laboratory evidence that directly linked the regret ranking to perceived opportunity. Study Set 3 ruled out an alternative interpretation involving framing effects. Overall, these findings show that people's biggest regrets are a reflection of where in life they see their largest opportunities; that is, where they see tangible prospects for change, growth, and renewal.     

Is regret for inaction relatively self‐enhancing?

Previous accounts of regret suggest that people report greater regret for inaction than for action because the former is longer lasting and more painful than the latter. We suggest instead that the tendency for people's greatest regrets to concern inaction more than action may be due to the relatively self‐enhancing nature of regrets for inaction. In Study 1 we asked people to think about their greatest recent regret and to code it as being due to action or inaction. In Study 2 participants described their greatest regret from across their entire life. In both studies we observed an inaction effect only amongst individuals high in self‐esteem (HSE). In Study 2 we found that the inaction effect was confined to HSE people whose greatest regret was personal in nature. These results support the claim that regret for inaction is relatively self‐enhancing and suggest that the inaction effect found in real‐life regrets may be due, in part at least, to the self‐enhancement goals of HSE individuals. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Scenes of shame,social roles,and the play with masks

This article explores various scenes of shame, raising the questions of what shame discloses about the self and how this self-disclosure takes place. Thereby, the common idea that shame discloses the self’s debasement will be challenged. The dramatic dialectics of showing and hiding display a much more ambiguous, dynamic self-image as result of an interactive evaluation of oneself by oneself and others. Seeing oneself seen contributes to the sense of who one becomes. From being absorbed in what one does, one might suddenly become self-aware, shift viewpoints and feel pressed to put on masks. In putting on a mask, one relates to oneself in distancing oneself from oneself. In being at once a moral agent and a performing actor with an audience and norms in mind, one embodies and transcends the social roles one takes. In addition to the feeling of shame, in which the self finds itself passively reflected, the self’s active reflections on its shame are to be taken into account. As examples from Milan Kundera, Shakespeare’s King Lear, a line from Kingsley Amis, a speech by Vaclav Havel and Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments indicate, self-(re)presentation in the public and the private sphere is a complex hermeneutical process with surprising twists.     

Regret and quality of life across the adult life span: the influence of disengagement and available future goals

Two studies examined the associations between life regrets and indicators of quality of life across the adult life span. Given that opportunities to undo regrets decline with age, regret intensity was expected to be inversely associated with subjective well-being and health among older adults. In addition, the research explored protective factors that have the potential to reduce older adults' regret intensity. It was suggested that being disengaged from undoing the consequences of regrets and having many future goals available may reduce older adults' intensity of regret and thereby contribute to a better quality of life. Across both studies, the findings demonstrate that older adults perceived reduced opportunities to undo the consequences of their regrets and that regret intensity predicted a reduced quality of life only among older adults. Furthermore, the findings support the adaptive value of disengagement and available future goals for managing life regrets in older adults.     

后悔的一致性模型:理论和证据

重新检验Ｇｉｌｏｖｉｃｈ和Ｍｅｄｖｅｃ的后悔时间性模型。该模型认为,与假设思维有关的短期后悔的研究结果相反,人们日常生活中最大的后悔（长期后悔）多是“不做”而不是“做”的后悔。该文认为这一理论上的矛盾来自于双方对“做／不做”概念以及“做－不做”规律适用范围的不同理解。该研究使用这一新的分类方法,发现和短期后悔一样,至少一半的长期后悔来自于“状态改变”的后悔。这此基础上提出后悔的一致性模型,认为长期     

Self‐Compassion,Self‐Esteem,and Well‐Being

This article focuses on the construct of self‐compassion and how it differs from self‐esteem. First, it discusses the fact that while self‐esteem is related to psychological well‐being, the pursuit of high self‐esteem can be problematic. Next it presents another way to feel good about oneself: self‐compassion. Self‐compassion entails treating oneself with kindness, recognizing one’s shared humanity, and being mindful when considering negative aspects of oneself. Finally, this article suggests that self‐compassion may offer similar mental health benefits as self‐esteem, but with fewer downsides. Research is presented which shows that self‐compassion provides greater emotional resilience and stability than self‐esteem, but involves less self‐evaluation, ego‐defensiveness, and self‐enhancement than self‐esteem. Whereas self‐esteem entails evaluating oneself positively and often involves the need to be special and above average, self‐compassion does not entail self‐evaluation or comparisons with others. Rather, it is a kind, connected, and clear‐sighted way of relating to ourselves even in instances of failure, perceived inadequacy, and imperfection.     

Traces of the past: an interview study with Finnish war children who did not return to Finland after the Second World War

This paper is an in-depth qualitative study based on interviews with 10 Finnish children who were evacuated to Sweden during Second World War and who did not return to Finland after the war. The interviewees were asked to tell about their lives. Nine of them were between 2 and 5 years and one was 7 years old at the time of evacuation. The aim was to study how their childhood experiences were reflected in adult memories, how they remembered or did not remember. This paper focuses on the consequences of not knowing about one’s early life and also on whether it is possible to observe signs of the Finnish mother. She did not appear explicitly but could be sensed in the tendency of the interviewees to express negations, displacement and active denial. The interviewers’ countertransference gave a sense of the unspoken but present, as feelings of shame and diffuse anger. The difficulty for the interviewees to think about or reflect over the loss of mother and the experience of evacuation led to a reduced ability to create meaning – in the sense of knowing oneself. We also looked for a comprehensive picture of the war children’s experience.     

The ‘Constitutive Thought’ of Regret

In this paper I defend and develop Bernard Williams’ claim that the ‘constitutive thought’ of regret is ‘something like “how much better if it had been otherwise”’. An introductory section on cognitivist theories of emotion is followed by a detailed investigation of the concept of ‘agent-regret’ and of the ways in which the ‘constitutive thought’ might be articulated in different situations in which agents acknowledge casual responsibility for bringing about undesirable outcomes. Among problematic cases discussed are those in which agents have caused harm through no fault of their own, or have been constrained to choose the lesser of two evils or to act against their moral values. R. Jay Wallace’s ‘bourgeois predicament’ and related cases, in which we recognize that our present advantages have flowed from regrettable antecedents, further show that regret is often not a simple emotion, and it is argued that conflicted regrets are sometimes unavoidable. Finally, the paper looks at Descartes’ account of regret as a form of sadness engendered by the recollection of irrecoverable happy experiences, to which the ‘constitutive thought’ does not readily apply. It is suggested that what Descartes is discussing is a different genre of emotion for which ‘nostalgia’ might be a better name.     

"If I had it to do over again...": midlife review, midcourse corrections, and women's well-being in midlife

Regrets about early adult life choices, expressed in midlife, are examined as a source of motivation for life changes in later midlife in 2 samples of women. Replicated findings with longitudinal data indicate that regret motivates goal setting but is not associated with actually making desired life changes. In both samples, women who had regrets about early adult life choices but did not make relevant life changes were lower in later well-being than both women with regrets who did make such changes and women without regrets. Compared with women who transformed regrets into life changes, women who did not were lower in effective instrumentality and higher in rumination, though they did not appear to face more barriers to change. Analyses with longitudinal data indicated that both rumination and effective instrumentality mediated the relationship between regret and well-being for women who did not translate regret into life changes.     

Regret appraisals, age, and subjective well-being

This study examined whether regrets are associated with age and subjective well-being in a sample of 176 participants ranging in age 19 to 82 years. Participants were asked to name unattained goals or events which they currently regret, and appraise these along a number of dimensions such as changeableness and consequences. The results showed that those who appraised their regret-related goals or events as having an impact on their present lives, reported a lower level of life satisfaction and more physical symptoms than those who appraised their regrets as having less consequence. There were also age differences in the regret appraisals. The older adults evaluated their regret-related goals or events as being less likely to change than did the younger adults.     

Parental Choices and the Prospect of Regret: An Alternative Account

Is the question ‘will you regret it if you do (not do) this?’ helpful when people face difficult life decisions, such as terminating a pregnancy if a disability is detected or deciding to become a parent? Despite the commonness of the question in daily life, several philosophers have argued lately against its usefulness. We reconstruct four arguments from recent literature on regret, transformative experience and the use of imagination in deliberation. After analysis of these arguments we conclude that the prospect of regret remains a useful deliberative heuristic, provided four conditions are fulfilled. If the prospect of (the absence of) regret is arrived at via reflection on one’s values, in a non-coercive context, when well-informed about factual circumstances, and in a process of self-commitment, the question of what one will regret is a helpful device to get in touch with one’s deepest concerns that give reasons to act in a particular way.     

When experienced regret refuses to fade: Regrets of action and attempting to forget open life regrets

The emotional experience of regret often persists rather then fading over time. The present experiment with 101 student participants investigated whether recollecting life regrets of action, construing life regrets as psychologically open, or attempting to forget versus remember regret-related thoughts interfered with the fading of affect over a two-week interval. Results showed that regrets of action failed to show a fading affect pattern. In addition, disappointment failed to fade for regrets of inaction construed as open. Experienced regret failed to fade for regrets construed as open followed by attempts to forget regret-related thoughts. Intrusive and avoidant thoughts co-occurred with the latter disruptions in fading affect. Discussion concerns the causal relationship of memory and fading affect, and the different processes underlying fading of affect for discrete emotions.     

Emptiness,Engulfment, and Life Struggle: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Chronic Depression

This article explores participants’ experience of what it is like to suffer depression, endured for years. Four women and three men, who each reported a minimum of four years’ of depression, were interviewed and themes were generated using interpretative phenomenological analysis. A first complex theme is depths of emptiness, which encompasses decline of will, disconnection from others, empty future, and numbing of the self. A second theme, episodic despairing engulfment, describes agonizing feelings and thoughts, a sense and conviction that one’s world and self are being destroyed, a growing belief that there is no escape, and sometimes ideas of suicide. The third theme, the struggle of unending life problems, describes a perceived timeline of struggle and difficulties, and terrible feelings and emotions. Five of the participants engaged in extreme negative thoughts and narrations about themselves, whereas two focused specifically on loss and threatening present situations. We conclude that chronic depression involves the experience of emptiness, but also a repeated experience of the destruction of self, connection to the world, and deepest hopes. In chronic depression there are negative thoughts and feelings, yet crucially, it also involves alterations in motivation, in particular a process in which aims, cares, and concerns that form important parts of the person’s life are repeatedly thwarted or destroyed. In extreme occurrences, the phenomenological self seems to be passing out of existence.     

An objection to gareth evans' account of self-identity

In chapter seven ‘Self Identification’ of his challenging book The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans attempts to give an account of how it is that one is able to think about oneself self‐consciously. On Evans’ view, when one attempts to think of oneself self‐consciously that person is having what he calls an ‘I’ thought. Since these ‘I’ thoughts are a case of reference, more specifically self‐reference, Evans thinks that these thoughts can be explained by employing the same theoretical framework that he uses to explain other kinds of reference. Evans thinks all thoughts are essentially structured, and this means that they must fall under his ‘generality constraint’. Since ‘I’ thoughts are also ‘thoughts’ they are essentially structured as well, and they too must be subject to the generality constraint. The radical implication of this is that Evans thinks that if ‘I’ thoughts are subject to the generality constraint, then he can show that self‐reference must be reference to a thing which we can locate on a spatio‐temporal map. In this article I hope to accomplish three things. First, I will spell out in detail the argument Evans uses to arrive at his claim that self‐reference must be reference to something located on a spatio‐temporal map. Second, I will raise an objection, which states that Evans’ conclusion that self‐reference must involve spatio‐temporal location is not a consequence of the generality constraint. Finally I will argue that Evans’ conclusion that self‐reference must involve spatio‐temporal location is in fact in tension with the generality constraint, rather than being an implication of it.