Thinking and Deciding

EMOTIONAL EFFECTS OF OUTCOMES 279
and when we can control the outcome through our choices, despite the short-term
negative effects on mood. Our control is not perfect, of course, and some people
experience pathological regret over events they cannot control.
Markman, Gavaski, Sherman, and McMullen (1993) had subjects play a card
game, like blackjack, on a computer. The computer was rigged so that every subject
won $5 (by tieing the dealer). The subject could have won nothing (if the dealer
won) or $20 (if the subject beat the dealer). After the outcome was revealed, subjects
thought aloud. The question was whether subjects would think “if I had chosen
differently I might have won” (upward counterfactuals) or that they might have lost
(downward counterfactuals). Subjects either thought they would play the game again
or not. When they thought they would play again, they imagined more upward counterfactuals
(might have won) than when they thought they would not play again.
And, when they thought they would play again, they expressed less satisfaction than
when they thought they would not play again. The knowledge about whether they
would play again or not thus affected their choice of counterfactuals and their emotional
response. They paid the price of momentary dissatisfaction when they thought
they could do better the next time. This experiment (and others like it) suggests that
regret has a function in self-regulation. A magic pill that got rid of all regret would
not necessarily be a good thing.
Individuals differ in their tendency to experience regret. Schwartz and his colleague
(2002) made up a five-item self-report questionnaire to measure this tendency.
The items included: “Whenever I make a choice, I’m curious about what would have
happened if I had chosen differently.”; “If I make a choice and it turns out well, I still
feel like something of a failure if I find out that another choice would have turned
out better.”; and, “Once I make a decision, I don’t look back” (reverse scored). This
test correlated with a test of “maximization,” the desire to get the best option in all
choices. People who tended to maximize were also generally less satisfied with their
consumer purchases. The opposite of a maximizer is a “satisficer,” someone who is
satisfied with what is good enough, even if it isn’t the best. Maximizers tended to
have a hard time making choices, and they often consider other options even after
they have made a choice, e.g., checking other radio stations than the one they are
listening to while in the car.
Regret may also explain why people are more likely to settle for the default,
which is what they get if they take no action (often nothing), when they are confronted
with too many options (Iyengar and Lepper, 2000). The difficulty of making
a decision, the fear of not picking the best option, and the fear of the resulting regret,
may lead people “not to choose” at all. (Of course, they do choose. They choose the
default.) What many experiments find is what happened to me when I went to the
web site of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service last year to find a good program to prepare
my tax return by computer. They had over ten choices, even after I eliminated
some that were clearly unsuitable. Overwhelmed, I did my taxes with a pencil.