Why regret

At the cut, gashed resting places I stop and rest, at the crawl-marks where he lay out on his belly to overpass some stretch of bauchy ice I lie out dragging myself forward with bear-knives in my fists. I come up to him and stare at the narrow-spaced, petty eyes, the dismayed face laid back on the shoulder, the nostrils flared, catching perhaps the first taint of me as he died.

I hack a ravine in his thigh, and eat and drink, and tear him down his whole length and open him and climb in and close him up after me, against the wind, and sleep.

And I lie still. Marshlights reappear, geese come trailing again up the flyway. In her ravine under old snow the dam-bear lies, licking lumps of smeared fur and drizzly eyes into shapes with her tongue.

And one hairy-soled trudge stuck out before me, the next groaned out, the next, the next, the rest of my days I spend wandering: wondering what, anyway, was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived? Oatmeal audio only Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.

Academy of American Poets Educator Newsletter. Teach This Poem. Follow Us. Find Poets. In sum, each of these three theories incorporates unique hypotheses concerning the key predictors of regret intensity; our study thus seeks to test these hypotheses. In addition, there is little evidence in the extant literature that the various predictors of regret specified in these three theories have been compared with each other in a single statistical model in order to assess their relative importance in generating regret intensity.

Our study thus seeks to simultaneously assess the effects of these various predictors of regret intensity whether a regret relates to an action or inaction, how justified the original decision was, and whether a regretted decision was in a social domain , and thereby determine which are the strongest drivers of regret intensity.

Connolly and Zeelenberg note, however, that little is known regarding the nature of justification generation. However, justifications need not always be rational or explicit: Research also shows that justifications based on our implicit personal values or life-rules affect our experience of regret Seta et al. This finding reflects core notions in theories of decision-making—like the theory of Regulatory Fit Higgins, ; Camacho et al.

It is therefore feasible that decision justifications present themselves in two forms: explicit and implicit. An important issue with respect to the theories mentioned above is that while the theories discussed focus on explaining variation in the intensity of regret, much of the existing empirical research concerning these theories has actually assessed the frequency with which reported regrets fall into particular categories—rather than explicitly measuring regret intensity.

Wilkinson et al. Emotional frequency and intensity are distinct processes underlying the experience of affect Diener et al. Studies assessing regret frequency as a proxy for regret intensity are therefore potentially misleading, and this may explain why the few studies directly distinguishing regret frequency and intensity found inaction regrets to be more frequently reported but no more intense than action regrets Feldman et al.

This study will therefore focus on reported regret intensity rather than frequency in order to provide conclusions as to the key drivers of regret intensity across the lifespan. In this study, we seek to test the temporal, decision-justification, and belonging theories of regret so as to determine which characteristics associated with a regretted decision are most strongly associated with the intensity of regret.

Predictions implied by these theories have been tested in the past, but each theory has generally been tested in isolation. We also deliberately focus on studying the intensity of regretted decisions as opposed to simply the frequency with which regretted decisions of particular types are reported.

Finally, we explore the effects on regret intensity of different forms of justification; namely, both explicit justification and implicit justification i. Specifically, the longer the time since the decision, the greater the difference between action and inaction regrets should be with inactions resulting in higher regret intensity.

Three thousand individuals were randomly selected from the New Zealand electoral roll and invited to take part in a postal survey. The initial participant pool size of 3, was chosen on the basis that this number was considered sufficient to ensure the return of at least several completed surveys for analysis.

A total of surveys were returned. Of these, did not contain responses to any of the items analyzed in this study, and were excluded from all analyses reported here. These surveys comprised the majority of the without responses to any of the items analyzed in this study. Sixty-eight percent were female. Once the 3, participants had been randomly selected from the electoral roll, a three-stage postal survey process was used in order to increase response rates.

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Massey University code of ethical conduct for research, teaching and evaluations involving human participants with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Once they had completed this item, all subsequent questions were asked in relation to this specified regret. Two independent coders, blind to the nature of the research, were asked to code each regret as reflecting either an action or an inaction.

Where the coders were unable to identify the regret as stemming from an action or an inaction, they coded the response as indeterminate. These indeterminate responses were subsequently treated as missing data in substantive analyses.

Two further independent coders, also blind to the nature of the research, separately coded each regret as reflecting 1 of 13 life domains similar to those used by Roese and Summerville Regrets spanning multiple domains were treated as missing data in the sense that it was unclear if they were primarily social or non-social in nature, as were other regrets that could not be classified within the 13 domains mentioned.

Any inter-rater disagreement during coding was settled by the judgment of the first author. Participants were asked to read the following preface in order to facilitate consideration of a more implicit i. For example, some people believe that you should always think of family needs before your own, or some think that the most important thing in life is to be nice to people.

Take a minute to think about what some of your most important personal rules are. What rules help guide your decision-making? Try to choose what you believe are some of your most important personal rules. Now that you have them in mind, compare them to the decision or event that you regret. Do you feel that the decision you made or event you experienced contradicts any of your personal rules? The study reported here formed part of a larger project exploring the multiple determinants of regret across the lifespan by authors 1, 3, and 5.

Participants also completed the brief preference for consistency scale Cialdini et al. Null hypothesis significance testing—the dominant data analysis framework in psychology—has many well-established problems for reviews see Cohen, ; Falk and Greenbaum, ; Gigerenzer et al. In this study we use Bayesian estimation see Kruschke, for an introduction.

Bayesian estimation has three main advantages relevant to the current study: Firstly, unlike null hypothesis significance testing—or any frequentist method—it allows us to directly calculate and report the probability that a particular hypothesis is true e.

Secondly, it also allows us to directly report the probability that a particular parameter falls in a specific region traditional frequentist confidence intervals cannot do this; see Morey et al.

Finally, Bayesian estimation allows us to take into account prior information: For example, we know that in psychology, most effects are relatively small in size: Taking this pre-existing information into account helps us estimate parameters more accurately. In this study, we used a similar prior for all estimated effects e. This was a normal distribution with mean zero and standard deviation of 0. This prior is based on the finding of a meta-meta-analysis of over 25, studies in social psychology Richard et al.

The prior of N 0, 0. This is an informative prior: All else being equal, it will tend to make our findings more conservative shrinking our point and interval estimates slightly toward zero. The basic framework for using this approach to prior setting is described in Williams They can even be functional if they propel you forward, determined not to make the same mistakes again.

Intuitively, though, we know that left to fester, regrets can control your mood to ill effect and make you miserable. Psychologists have theorized as to why this asymmetry exists. In their paper, which was published in the journal Emotion, Davidai and Gilovich note that action-related regrets spur reparative work, which allows us to deal with them and let them go. If you moved to Chicago for work and regret having left your extended family, you can vow to fly home for every holiday.

We also process these two types of regrets differently. Selling your house at the wrong time becomes a lesson learned, or ultimately reveals a silver lining. So, according to their theory, there are regrets of inaction related to your ideal self, and regrets of actions related to your ought self. The reason for this is rooted in a basic premise of self-discrepancy theory. Its creator, Columbia University psychology professor E. We regret not telling someone we loved them more before they died.

We regret not spending our time more wisely, accomplishing more. We regret getting into bad relationships, or making mistakes in a past relationship. Yes, we regret things, and sometimes it can be consuming. Why We Have Regret Simply put, we regret choices we make, because we worry that we should have made other choices.