The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

by Daniel H. Pink

In 2016, DUL sent half of Duke’s six thousand undergraduates a survey and told them that if they completed and returned it, they’d be entered into a raffle for a $75 gift card. The other three thousand students also received an email with the survey. But the accompanying rules were different. Everybody would be entered in a raffle for a $75 gift card. But if the organizers drew someone’s name and that person had not completed the survey, he would be ineligible for the prize and the organizers would select another name. Which approach yielded the most survey responses? It wasn’t even close. Within a week, only one-third of the students in the first group had completed the survey, but two-thirds of the students in the second group had done so.[2] The first instance was a good old-fashioned raffle. The second was what behavioral economists have come to call a “regret lottery.”