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Regret and Other Emotions Related to Decision-Making: Antecedents, Appraisals, and Phenomenological Aspects

Objectives: The mainstream position on regret in psychological literature is that its necessary conditions are agency and responsibility, that is, to choose freely but badly. Without free choice, other emotions, such as disappointment, are deemed to be elicited when the outcome is worse than expecte...

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Autores principales: Matarazzo, Olimpia, Abbamonte, Lucia, Greco, Claudia, Pizzini, Barbara, Nigro, Giovanna
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8718115/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34975673
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.783248
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author Matarazzo, Olimpia
Abbamonte, Lucia
Greco, Claudia
Pizzini, Barbara
Nigro, Giovanna
author_facet Matarazzo, Olimpia
Abbamonte, Lucia
Greco, Claudia
Pizzini, Barbara
Nigro, Giovanna
author_sort Matarazzo, Olimpia
collection PubMed
description Objectives: The mainstream position on regret in psychological literature is that its necessary conditions are agency and responsibility, that is, to choose freely but badly. Without free choice, other emotions, such as disappointment, are deemed to be elicited when the outcome is worse than expected. In two experiments, we tested the opposite hypothesis that being forced by external circumstances to choose an option inconsistent with one’s own intentions is an important source of regret and a core component of its phenomenology, regardless of the positivity/negativity of the post-decision outcome. Along with regret, four post-decision emotions – anger toward oneself, disappointment, anger toward circumstances, and satisfaction – were investigated to examine their analogies and differences to regret with regard to antecedents, appraisals, and phenomenological aspects. Methods: Through the scenario methodology, we manipulated three variables: choice (free/forced), outcome (positive/negative), and time (short/long time after decision-making). Moreover, we investigated whether responsibility, decision justifiability, and some phenomenological aspects (self-attribution, other attribution, and contentment) mediated the effect exerted by choice, singularly or in interaction with outcome and time, on the five emotions. Each study was conducted with 336 participants, aged 18–60. Results: The results of both studies were similar and supported our hypothesis. In particular, regret elicited by forced choice was always high, regardless of the valence of outcome, whereas free choice elicited regret was high only with a negative outcome. Moreover, regret was unaffected by responsibility and decision justifiability, whereas it was affected by the three phenomenological dimensions. Conclusion: Our results suggest that (1) the prevailing theory of regret is too binding, since it posits as necessary some requirements which are not; (2) the antecedents and phenomenology of regret are broader than it is generally believed; (3) decision-making produces a complex emotional constellation, where the different emotions, singularly and/or in combination, constitute the affective responses to the different aspects of decision-making.
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spelling pubmed-87181152021-12-31 Regret and Other Emotions Related to Decision-Making: Antecedents, Appraisals, and Phenomenological Aspects Matarazzo, Olimpia Abbamonte, Lucia Greco, Claudia Pizzini, Barbara Nigro, Giovanna Front Psychol Psychology Objectives: The mainstream position on regret in psychological literature is that its necessary conditions are agency and responsibility, that is, to choose freely but badly. Without free choice, other emotions, such as disappointment, are deemed to be elicited when the outcome is worse than expected. In two experiments, we tested the opposite hypothesis that being forced by external circumstances to choose an option inconsistent with one’s own intentions is an important source of regret and a core component of its phenomenology, regardless of the positivity/negativity of the post-decision outcome. Along with regret, four post-decision emotions – anger toward oneself, disappointment, anger toward circumstances, and satisfaction – were investigated to examine their analogies and differences to regret with regard to antecedents, appraisals, and phenomenological aspects. Methods: Through the scenario methodology, we manipulated three variables: choice (free/forced), outcome (positive/negative), and time (short/long time after decision-making). Moreover, we investigated whether responsibility, decision justifiability, and some phenomenological aspects (self-attribution, other attribution, and contentment) mediated the effect exerted by choice, singularly or in interaction with outcome and time, on the five emotions. Each study was conducted with 336 participants, aged 18–60. Results: The results of both studies were similar and supported our hypothesis. In particular, regret elicited by forced choice was always high, regardless of the valence of outcome, whereas free choice elicited regret was high only with a negative outcome. Moreover, regret was unaffected by responsibility and decision justifiability, whereas it was affected by the three phenomenological dimensions. Conclusion: Our results suggest that (1) the prevailing theory of regret is too binding, since it posits as necessary some requirements which are not; (2) the antecedents and phenomenology of regret are broader than it is generally believed; (3) decision-making produces a complex emotional constellation, where the different emotions, singularly and/or in combination, constitute the affective responses to the different aspects of decision-making. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8718115/ /pubmed/34975673 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.783248 Text en Copyright © 2021 Matarazzo, Abbamonte, Greco, Pizzini and Nigro. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Matarazzo, Olimpia
Abbamonte, Lucia
Greco, Claudia
Pizzini, Barbara
Nigro, Giovanna
Regret and Other Emotions Related to Decision-Making: Antecedents, Appraisals, and Phenomenological Aspects
title Regret and Other Emotions Related to Decision-Making: Antecedents, Appraisals, and Phenomenological Aspects
title_full Regret and Other Emotions Related to Decision-Making: Antecedents, Appraisals, and Phenomenological Aspects
title_fullStr Regret and Other Emotions Related to Decision-Making: Antecedents, Appraisals, and Phenomenological Aspects
title_full_unstemmed Regret and Other Emotions Related to Decision-Making: Antecedents, Appraisals, and Phenomenological Aspects
title_short Regret and Other Emotions Related to Decision-Making: Antecedents, Appraisals, and Phenomenological Aspects
title_sort regret and other emotions related to decision-making: antecedents, appraisals, and phenomenological aspects
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8718115/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34975673
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.783248
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