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October 18 - October 22, 2022
Regret is not dangerous or abnormal, a deviation from the steady path to happiness. It is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human. Regret is also valuable. It clarifies. It instructs. Done right, it needn’t drag us down; it can lift us up.
Too much negative emotion, of course, is debilitating. But too little is also destructive.
These seventy years of research distill to two simple yet urgent conclusions: Regret makes us human. Regret makes us better.
Nearly all regrets fall into four core categories—foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets.
It takes a few years for young brains to acquire the strength and muscularity to perform the mental trapeze act—swinging between past and present and between reality and imagination—that regret demands.[5] That’s why most children don’t begin to understand regret until age six.
In a now famous study of the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, Victoria Medvec and Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University and Scott Madey of the University of Toledo collected videos of about three dozen silver and bronze medalists.
The athletes who finished third appeared significantly happier than those who finished second.
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.
During the podium ceremonies, the gold medalists were almost all smiling widely (what’s called a “Duchenne smile”). So, too, were most of the bronze medalists. The silver medalists? Not so much. They smiled only one-fourth as much as their counterparts.
thoughts about the past that make us feel better are relatively rare, while thoughts that make us feel worse are exceedingly common.
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.
A look at the research shows that regret, handled correctly, offers three broad benefits. It can sharpen our decision-making skills. It can elevate our performance on a range of tasks. And it can strengthen our sense of meaning and connectedness.
This is one of the central findings on regret: it can deepen persistence, which almost always elevates performance.
One view: Feeling is for ignoring. Emotions aren’t significant, this perspective holds. They’re mere annoyances, distractions from serious matters. Better to bat them away or cast them into oblivion. Focus on the hardheaded, eschew the softhearted, and you’ll be fine.
Another view: Feeling is for feeling. According to this position, emotions are the essence of our being. Talk about them. Vent about them.
When it comes to regret, a third view is healthier: Feeling is for thinking. Don’t dodge emotions. Don’t wallow in them either. Confront them. Use them as a catalyst for future behavior. If thinking is for doing, feeling can help us think.
When you feel the spear of regret, you have three possible responses. You can conclude that feeling is for ignoring—and bury or minimize it. That leads to delusion. You can conclude that feeling is for feeling—and wallow in it. That leads to despair. Or you can conclude that feeling is for thinking—and address it.
When feeling is for thinking, and thinking is for doing, regret is for making us better.
“If you have a broken heart, it means you have done something big enough and important enough and valuable enough to have broken your heart.”
Beginning with a 1957 book called Syntactic Structures, Chomsky capsized these beliefs. He argued that every language was built atop a “deep structure”—a universal framework of rules lodged in the human brain.
One of the most robust findings, in the academic research and my own, is that over time we are much more likely to regret the chances we didn’t take than the chances we did.
Connection regrets arise any time we neglect the people who help establish our own sense of wholeness. When those relationships fray or disappear or never develop, we feel an abiding loss.
The failure to accomplish a few important goals within the limited span of a single life.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, written by Jonathan Haidt and published in 2012.
For example, is it wrong for children to talk back to their parents? To call adults by their first name?
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.
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,
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THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF REGRET
Deep structure of regret.
That is the idea animating a theory of motivation that Tory Higgins, a Columbia University social psychologist, first proposed in 1987. Higgins argued that we all have an “actual self,” an “ideal self,” and an “ought self.”
Our actual self is the bundle of attributes that we currently possess. Our ideal self is the self we believe we could be—our hopes, wishes, and dreams. And our ought self is the self we believe we should be—our duties, commitments, and responsibilities.
people are much more likely to undo regrets of action than regrets of inaction.[1] We’re more apt to repair what we did than what we didn’t do.
You may have noticed that you’re often better at solving other people’s problems than your own. Because you’re less enmeshed in others’ details than they are, you’re able to see the full picture in ways they cannot.
WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR REGRETS: A RECAP
