The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

by Daniel H. Pink

“Though we would like to live without regrets, and sometimes proudly insist that we have none, this is not really possible, if only because we are mortal.” James Baldwin, 1967

But the most common negative emotion—and the second most common emotion of any kind—was regret.

2016 study that tracked the choices and behavior of more than a hundred Swedes found that participants ended up regretting about 30 percent of the decisions they’d made during the previous week.[20]

“To live, it seems, is to accumulate at least some regrets.”[22]

Every damn thing you do in life can pay off for you. Because, as we’re about to discover, regret doesn’t just make us human. It also makes us better.

Since 1872, when Charles Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, scientists have explored how facial expressions reveal our moods.

THE THRILL OF DEFEAT AND THE AGONY OF VICTORY The human superpower I described in Chapter 2—our ability to mentally travel through time and to conjure incidents and outcomes that never happened—enables what logicians call “counterfactual thinking.”

The athletes who finished third appeared significantly happier than those who finished second.

The reason, researchers concluded, was counterfactual thinking. Counterfactuals can point in either of two directions—down or up. With “downward counterfactuals,” we contemplate how an alternative could have been worse. They prompt us to say “At least . . .”—as in, “Sure, I got a C+ on that exam, but at least I passed the course and don’t have to take it again.” Let’s call these types of counterfactuals At Leasts.

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.

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.

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]

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.

they’ve discovered that If Onlys outnumber At Leasts in people’s lives—often by a wide margin.[7]

Two decades of research on counterfactual thinking exposes an oddity: thoughts about the past that make us feel better are relatively rare, while thoughts that make us feel worse are exceedingly common. Are we all self-sabotaging masochists? No—or at least not all of us. Instead, we are organisms programmed for survival. At Least counterfactuals preserve our feelings in the moment, but they rarely enhance our decisions or performance in the future.

Regret is the quintessential upward counterfactual—the ultimate If Only. The source of its power, scientists are discovering, is that it muddles the conventional pain-pleasure calculus.[10] Its very purpose is to make us feel worse—because by making us feel worse today, regret helps us do better tomorrow.

An enormous number of people of all ages and nationalities regretted being “too introverted.”

A key reason for this discrepancy is that when we act, we know what happened next. We see the outcome and that can shrink regret’s half-life. But when we don’t act—when we don’t step off that metaphorical train—we can only speculate how events would have unfolded.

The consequences of actions are specific, concrete, and limited. The consequences of inaction are general, abstract, and unbounded.

At the heart of all boldness regrets is the thwarted possibility of growth. The failure to become the person—happier, braver, more evolved—one could have been.

“staying with my current company when I knew over fourteen years ago it would never satisfy,”

All deep structure regrets reveal a need and yield a lesson. With boldness regrets, the human need is growth—to expand as a person, to enjoy the richness of the world, to experience more than an ordinary life. The lesson is plain: Speak up. Ask him out. Take that trip. Start that business. Step off the train.

But doing so requires effort, brings emotional uncertainty, and risks rejection. So we confront a choice: Try to make the relationship whole—or let it remain unresolved? Connection regrets sound like this: If only I’d reached out.

Both types of regrets nag at us, but for different reasons. Closed door regrets distress us because we can’t do anything about them. Open door regrets bother us because we can, though it requires effort. In the World Regret Survey, many participants reported the sense of loss that accompanies a door that has closed.

A 2012 study by Mike Morrison, Kai Epstude, and Neal Roese concluded that regrets about social relationships are felt more deeply than other types of regrets because they threaten our sense of belonging. When our connections to others tatter or disintegrate, we suffer. And when it’s our fault, we suffer even more. “The need to belong,” they wrote, “is not just a fundamental human motive but a fundamental component of regret.”[2]

Rifts are more dramatic. But drifts are more common.

asked

But we generally stink at divining what other people think and anticipating how they will behave. Worse, we don’t realize how inept we are at these skills.[3] And

What’s going on in these situations is a phenomenon that social psychologists call “pluralistic ignorance.” We mistakenly assume that our beliefs differ vastly from everyone else’s—especially when those private thoughts seem at odds with broader public behavior. So, when we struggle to understand a lecture, we don’t ask questions because we erroneously believe that because other people aren’t asking questions, that means they understand—and we don’t want to look dumb. But we don’t consider that other people might be equally befuddled—and equally nervous about seeming stupid. We’re confused, but we stay confused because we falsely believe nobody but us is confused!

Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. . . . Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.[7]

“Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.”[8]

he said he could summarize the conclusion of the longest-running examination of human flourishing in five words: “Happiness is love. Full stop.”[11] In the end, the problem we contend with as people is remarkably simple. What give our lives significance and satisfaction are meaningful relationships. But when those relationships come apart, whether by intent or inattention, what stands in the way of bringing them back together are feelings of awkwardness. We fear that we’ll botch our efforts to reconnect, that we’ll make our intended recipients even more uncomfortable. Yet these concerns are almost always misplaced. Sure, we’ll get rebuffed sometimes. But more often—much more often, in fact—we overestimate how awkward we’ll feel and underestimate how much others will welcome our overtures. So, this simple problem has an even simpler solution. Shove aside the awkwardness.

The lesson of closed doors is to do better next time. The lesson of open doors is to do something now. If a relationship you care about has come undone, place the call. Make that visit. Say what you feel. Push past the awkwardness and reach out.

They became less concerned with making the smarter choice and tried to make the less regrettable choice—and those aren’t always the same. Anticipating regret can sometimes steer us away from the best decision and toward the decision that most shields us from regret—as you’ll discover again when you return to the office.

The academic advisers at Penn State University concur: “[Y]our first hunch is usually correct. Don’t change an answer unless you are very sure of the change.” The Princeton Review, whose business is preparing students for every variety of standardized test, cautions: “Most times you want to go with your gut, rather than over thinking your answers. Many students just end up changing the right answer to the wrong one!”[30]

The conventional wisdom is also wrong. Nearly every study conducted on the topic has shown that when students change answers on tests, they are significantly more likely to change from a wrong answer to a right answer (sweet!) than they are to switch from a right answer to a wrong one (d’oh!). Students who change their answers usually improve their scores.[31]

So, why does this wrongheaded advice endure? Anticipated regret distorts our judgment.

Warning: AR may cause decision paralysis, risk aversion, first instinct fallacies, and lower test scores.

In the pre-Simon world, the dominant economic models assumed that when people made decisions, their preferences were stable and they had all the information they needed, so they always tried to maximize their outcomes.

Simon persuaded the economics profession that this assumption, while accurate in some cases, wasn’t always correct. Our preferences sometimes changed.

Most maximizers were miserable. The maximizers reported “significantly less life satisfaction, happiness, [and] optimism” and significantly more depression than the satisficers.[34]

“maximizers’ increased sensitivity to regret—both experienced and anticipated.” Maximizers regretted everything at every stage.

They trapped people in ruminating “feeling is for feeling” regret. In their effort to maximize happiness on all things, they were pulverizing it on most things.

And herein lies a problem. The wobbly beam in Bezos’s Regret Minimization Framework is that constantly trying to anticipate and minimize our regrets can become a form of unhealthy maximizing.

OPTIMIZING REGRET Our goal should not be to always minimize regret. Our goal should be to optimize it. By combining the science of anticipated regret with the new deep structure of regret, we can refine our mental model. Call it the Regret Optimization Framework.

principles: In many circumstances, anticipating our regrets can lead to healthier behavior, smarter professional choices, and greater happiness. Yet when we anticipate our regrets, we frequently overestimate them, buying emotional insurance we don’t need and thereby distorting our decisions. And if we go too far—if we maximize on regret minimization—we can make our situation even worse. At the same time, people around the world consistently express the same four core regrets. These regrets

endure. They reveal fundamental human needs. And together, they offer a ...

The Regret Optimization Framework holds that we should devote time and effort to anticipate the four core regrets: foundation regrets, boldness regre...

So, under the Regret Optimization Framework, when deciding a course of action, begin by asking whether you are dealing with one of the four core regrets. If not, satisfice. For example, if you’re buying lawn furniture or a(nother) microwave oven, that decision is unlikely to involve any fundamental, enduring human need. Make a choice and move on. You’ll be fine.

WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR REGRETS: A RECAP For an Action Regret Undo it. Apologize, make amends, or try to repair the damage. At Least It. Find the silver lining: think about how the situation could have turned out worse and appreciate that it didn’t. For Any Regret (Action or Inaction) Self-disclosure. Relive and relieve the regret by telling others about it—admission clears the air—or by writing about it privately. Self-compassion. Normalize and neutralize the regret by treating yourself the way you’d treat a friend. Self-distancing. Analyze and strategize about the lessons you’ve learned from the regret by zooming out in time, in space, or through language. To Use Anticipated Regrets in Your Decision Making: Satisfice on most decisions. If you are not dealing with one of the four core