The Experience and Regulation of Regret Across the Adult Life Span

Regret is a decision-related emotion that arises when a chosen outcome is, or is believed to be, worse than a non-chosen alternative (Connolly & Zeelenberg, 2002). The experience and anticipation of regret has been linked to important real-life decisions such as health behaviors (medical screening, condom use) and financial decisions (Zeelenberg, 1999). The behavioral consequences of regret include both risk aversion and risk taking, decision avoidance, and non-optimal decision making (Anderson, 2003; Gilovich & Medvec, 1995; Zeelenberg & Pieters, 2007). Moreover, enduring negative emotions like regret may have a negative impact on psychological and physical health (Fredrickson, 2001). Thus, understanding how and why we experience regret and how regret influences choices and behaviors are important research questions. However, previous research on regret has, to a large extent, relied on younger participants and to date little is known about how and if the experience and anticipation of regret changes over the adult life-span. In this chapter we review the available evidence for how the experience and regulation of regret vary with age. The aim of this chapter is to merge existing findings and develop a set of novel hypotheses of how aging, emotional experience, and regulation may interact in everyday life. This is an important task since older adults today are asked to make an increasing number of decisions and the older population is rapidly growing. Identifying factors that may differentially influence the decisions of younger and older adults is an important task that will help in understanding how older adults make decisions (Peters, Hess, Västfjäll, & Auman, 2007).