Anticipated regret, expected feedback and behavioral decision making

✍ Scribed by Marcel Zeelenberg

• Book ID: 101279999
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 149 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-3257
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0771(199906)12:2<93::aid-bdm311>3.0.co;2-s

✦ Synopsis

This paper addresses the eects of the anticipation of regret on decision making under uncertainty. Regret is a negative, cognitively based emotion that we experience when realizing or imagining that our present situation would have been better, had we decided dierently. The experience of post-decisional regret is for a large part conditional on the knowledge of the outcomes of the rejected alternatives. A series of studies is reviewed in which it is shown that whether or not decision makers expect post-decisional feedback on rejected alternatives has a profound in¯uence on the decisions they make. These studies, focusing on choice between gambles, consumer decision making and interpersonal decision making, also show that anticipated regret can promote risk-averse as well as riskseeking choices. This review of empirical studies is followed by a discussion of the conditions under which we can expect the anticipation of regret to take place.