One of the major behavioral economists, Daniel Kahneman (Kahneman, 2011) devotes considerable time to the power and dynamics of Regret. He (Kahneman, 2011, p. 347) notes that:
“Regret is an emotion, and it is also a punishment that we administer to ourselves. The fear of regret is a factor in many of the decisions that people make (“Don’t do this, you will regret it”) is a common warning, and the actual experience of regret is familiar.”
The feeling of Regret is particularly tricky because it goes both ways. There is the error of commission (“I regret what I have done”) and the error of omission (“I regret what I didn’t do.”) This emotion has it coming and going. As a double-edged blade, regret cuts deeply into our physiology. It is wrapped up not only with several areas of our brain that are involved with decision-making and planning (orbital frontal cortex in particular), with several areas that are centrally involved in the processing of our emotions (the amygdala in particular), and areas that link decision-making and planning to emotions (anterior cingulate cortex). It seems that Regret is tricky not only because it involves both omission and commission but also because it involves both agency (doing or not doing something) and emotion (how we feel about doing or not doing something).
There is one other important feature about regret that should be acknowledged, especially as it relates to professional coaching. It seems that we human beings are more concerned with the regret of inaction (omission) than the regret of wrongful action (commission). I bring in Daniel Gilbert, another behavioral economist, to reinforce this finding (Gilbert, 2006, p. 197):
“. . . in the long run, people of every age and in every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did, which is why the most popular regrets include not going to college, not grasping profitable business opportunities, and not spending enough time with family and friends.”
Gilbert suggests that we focus on omission because it is much easier to produce positive and credible images of what could have happened if we had taken action than it is to generate images regarding the consequences of doing the wrong thing. “We can rationalize an excess of courage more easily than an excess of cowardice.” (Gilbert, 2006, p. 197)
While it is hard to be kind to ourselves when we can vividly recall our horrible blunder, it is relatively easy for us to repress any memory of this blunder. Better yet, we can learn from this blunder. It is much harder to yearn over that which never occurred. We can easily envision the parade that we never saw and beat ourselves up for failing to find the willpower needed to take action. My colleague, John Preston, often noted that willpower requires the activation of multiple areas of our brain. It is not a simple operation to move from inaction to action—just recall the act of getting out of bed in the morning! Struggles in the domain of ideas are particularly prevalent, given the role played by willpower in moving an idea to action.
