Andy Egan has recently produced a set of alleged counterexamples to causal decision theory in which agents are forced to decide among causally unratifiable options, thereby making choices they know they will regret. I show that, far from being counterexamples, CDT gets Egan's cases exactly right. Egan thinks otherwise because he has misapplied CDT by requiring agents to make binding choices before they have processed all available information about the causal consequences of their acts. I elucidate CDT in a (...) way that makes it clear where Egan goes wrong, and which explains why his examples pose no threat to the theory. My approach has similarities to a modification of CDT proposed by Frank Arntzenius, but it differs in the significance that it assigns to potential regrets. I maintain, contrary to Arntzenius, that an agent facing Egan's decisions can rationally choose actions that she knows she will later regret. All rationality demands of agents it that they maximize unconditional causal expected utility from an epistemic perspective that accurately reflects all the available evidence about what their acts are likely to cause. This yields correct answers even in outlandish cases in which one is sure to regret whatever one does. (shrink)

Women face extraordinary difficulty in seeking sterilization as physicians routinely deny them the procedure. Physicians defend such denials by citing the possibility of future regret, a well‐studied phenomenon in women’s sterilization literature. Regret is, however, a problematic emotion upon which to deny reproductive freedom as regret is neither satisfactorily defined and measured, nor is it centered in analogous cases regarding men’s decision to undergo sterilization or the decision of women to undergo fertility treatment. Why then is (...) class='Hi'>regret such a concern in the voluntary sterilization of women? I argue that regret is centered in women’s voluntary sterilization due to pronatalism or expectations that womanhood means motherhood. Women seeking voluntary sterilization are regarded as a deviant identity that rejects what is taken to be their essential role of motherhood and they are thus seen as vulnerable to regret. (shrink)

Should we regret the fact that we are often more emotionally resilient in response to the deaths of our loved ones than we might expect -- that the suffering associated with grief often dissipates more quickly and more fully than we anticipate? Dan Moller ("Love and Death") argues that we should, because this resilience epistemically severs us from our loved ones and thereby "deprives us of insight into our own condition." I argue that Moller's conclusion is correct despite resting (...) on a mistaken picture of the nature and significance of grief. Unlike Moller, I contend that grief is a composite emotional process, rather than a single mental state; that grief is a species of emotional attention rather than perception; and that grief is a form of activity directed at placing our relationships with the deceased on new terms. It is precisely because grief has these three features that it facilitates the scrutiny of our practical identities and thus fosters self-knowledge and self-understanding. (shrink)

In this study, we investigated whether differences in the experience of regret may be a potential explanation for damaging behaviours associated with psychopathy and criminal offending. Participants were incarcerated offenders (n = 60) and non-incarcerated controls (n = 20). Psychopathic traits were characterised with the Psychopathic Checklist: Screening Version. Regret was assessed by responses to outcomes on a simulated gambling task. Incarcerated offenders experienced a reduced sense of regret as compared to non-incarcerated controls. We obtained some evidence (...) that specific psychopathic factors and facets could differentially relate to the experience and use of emotions. Our data provide initial evidence of important associations between negative emotions and decision behaviour in the context of criminal offending. (shrink)

Agent-regret seems to give rise to a philosophical puzzle. If we grant that we are not morally responsible for consequences outside our control (the ‘Standard View’), then agent-regret—which involves self-reproach and a desire to make amends for consequences outside one’s control—appears rationally indefensible. But despite its apparent indefensibility, agent-regret still seems like a reasonable response to bad moral luck. I argue here that the puzzle can be resolved if we appreciate the role that agent-regret plays in (...) a larger social practice that helps us deal with bad moral luck. That agent-regret is a component in a social practice limits the questions that we can reasonably ask about it. While we can ask whether an experience of agent-regret is rational given the norms of this practice, we cannot ask the question that motivates the puzzle of agent-regret, viz. whether agent-regret is rationally defensible according to the Standard View. (shrink)

1. Kantian moral theories have been criticized for their inability to make sense of the phenomenology and propriety of regret in the face of difficult moral choices. As Bernard Williams puts it, re...

An increasing number of research fields must expect that their projects will be classified as susceptible to misuse or otherwise security relevant, even if the reasons or criteria for this classification have not yet been uniformly developed. Research institutions will commonly distribute the obligation to predict and prevent misuse across multiple members and structures including ethics committees. However, cases of misuse occur even in spite of these precautions, raising the question of the type and distribution of responsibility for the resulting (...) harm. This question becomes even more pressing if research ethics committees in their decisions ask researchers to provide a misuse- specific risk assessment or risk mitigation plan and thereby shift back a part of their responsibility on the researchers. While this kind of requirement may be considered as unsatisfactory by researchers, members of research ethics committees or boards and third-party funders, will argue that it fulfils two important functions. On the one hand, it makes use of the best available source for misuse risk-assessment available to most committees; on the other hand, it guarantees that the researchers at least try to take responsibility. If researchers, committee members and others involved discharge their obligation to predict and mitigate misuse risks with due diligence, any backward-looking responsibility they retain is to show agent regret for the results of their work having been misused. (shrink)

This essay elaborates on my essay, “Confucius’ Complaints and the Analects’ Account of the Good Life,” responding to issues and criticisms raised by Michael Ing and Manyul Im. Ing’s and Im’s critiques most invite reflection on regret, both as it might situate in Confucius’ own life and as it could feature more broadly in developed moral maturity. I consider two modes of regret: regret concerning compromises of conscience and end-of-life regret. The latter can naturally include elements (...) of the former, but may nonetheless have special features not exhausted by it. I argue that the model of Confucius is consistent with versions of both of these forms of regret while also acknowledging that where the Analects is concerned, much of what we might say about regret will inevitably be somewhat speculative. The essay thus dwells in some of the ambiguities suggested by the Analects. (shrink)

This book attempts to understand regret, an emotion that bridges the actual and the possible, the past and present. Through a wealth of sources it takes up questions of the meaning of regret and how it differs from similar experiences such as remorse and guilt; what sorts of things people most often regret; and the roots of regret in circumstances and in who we are. It takes issue with the view common both in this culture and (...) in leading theories of decision that regret is irrational and dysfunctional - specifying the surprising benefits of regret, its great and good sense. (shrink)

Several decision rules, including the minimax regret rule, have been posited to suggest optimizing strategies for an individual when neither objective nor subjective probabilities can be associated to the various states of the world. These all share the shortcoming of focusing only on extreme outcomes. This paper suggests an alternative approach of ‘tempered regrets’ which may more closely replicate the decision process of individuals in those situations in which avoiding the worst outcome tempers the loss from not achieving the (...) best outcome. The assumption of total ignorance of the probabilities associated with the various states is maintained. Applications and illustrations from standard neoclassical theory are discussed. (shrink)

Regret is often symptomatic of the defective decisions associated with “temporary preference” problems. It may also help overcome these defects. Outcome regret can modify the relative utilities of different payoffs. Process regret can motivate search for better decision processes or trap-evading strategies. Heightened regret may thus be functional for control of these self-defeating choices.

For healthcare professionals and organizations, there is an emphasis on addressing moral distress and compassion fatigue among clinicians. While addressing these issues is vital, this paper suggests that the philosophical concept of agent-regret is a relevant but overlooked issue in healthcare. To experience agent-regret is to regret your harmful but not wrongful actions. This person’s action results in someone being killed or significantly injured, but it was ethically faultless. Despite being faultless, agent-regret is an emotional response (...) concerning one’s agency in a situation that results in death or significant harm. In healthcare, many clinicians are likely to experience regret for faultless actions that significantly harm or cause the death of a patient. The recognition of agent-regret in healthcare is significant because it differs, conceptually and practically, from moral distress and compassion fatigue. Building on the work of Wojtowicz (Citation2022), we should strive to understand clinicians’ agent-regret by recognizing their agency in the situation, not lessening or removing it. (shrink)

Mercier and Sperber (M&S) argue that reasoning has evolved primarily as an adjunct to persuasive communication rather than as a basis for consequential choice. Recent research on decision-related regret suggests that regret aversion and concomitant needs for justification may underpin a complementary mechanism that can, if appropriately deployed, convert M&S's facile arguer into an effective decision maker, with obvious evolutionary advantages.

Based on the regret regulation theory and entrepreneurial cognition theory, this study aims to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurs’ anticipated regret and entrepreneurial persistence through the mediator of entrepreneurial cognition. To that end, we distributed surveys to entrepreneurs who were supported by the “Xing Chuang Tian Di” project and used 248 questionnaire data to examine the hypotheses. The results show that entrepreneurs’ anticipated regret has a significant and direct impact on entrepreneurial persistence. Also, entrepreneurship cognition plays a (...) mediating role between anticipated regret and entrepreneurial persistence. In addition, the entrepreneurial environment plays a positive role in moderating the relationship between anticipated regret and entrepreneurial persistence. (shrink)

I explore how agent-regret and its object—faultlessly harming someone—can call for various responses. I look at two sorts of responses. Firstly, I explore responses that respect the agent’s role as an agent. This revolves around a feature of “it was just an accident”—a common response to agent-regret—that has largely gone ignored in the literature: that it can downplay one’s role as an agent. I argue that we need to take seriously the fact that those who have caused harms (...) are genuine agents, to ignore this fails to allow these agents to move on. Secondly, following Sussman and MacKenzie, I explore responses that benefit the victim. I argue that we should strive to understand how to configure these responses in a way that does not blame the agent. To do this I look at the role of actions in our self-understanding, as people who have done particular things. I end by briefly considering the ways in which tort law and restorative justice might help us to understand how to appropriately respond to accidentally harming someone. I urge that we need to take this as a starting point to find a better way to respond to the agents of faultless harms. (shrink)

This book provides a study of regret (metameleia) in the moral psychology of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. It was important for all these philosophers to insist that regret is a characteristic of neither fully virtuous nor wholly irredeemable characters. Rather, they took regret to be something that affects people who retrospectively feel pain at realising an earlier mistaken action. Regret sets out in full the accounts of the nature of this emotion found in the works (...) of these philosophers, viewing them in the context of their respective accounts of virtuous and non-virtuous agents, ethical progress, the role of knowledge in producing good actions, and compares it with modern philosophical notions of 'agent regret'. (shrink)

This paper investigates the moral emotion of being socially, but non-agentially connected to a harm. I propose understanding the emotion of an affiliated onlooker as a species of regret called ‘social-regret’. Breaking from existing guilt- and shame-based accounts, I argue that social-regret can be a fitting, expressive, and revelatory reactive attitude that opens the way for deliberation over accountability for others’ harms. When we feel social-regret, our attention is directed towards the moral salience of our social (...) relations and the expectations that undergird them, as well as possibilities for ameliorative action. I consider several existing accounts of affiliated onlookers’ emotions (including embarrassment, guilt, and shame), and I highlight the advantages of supplementing these with a regret-based account. Social-regret provides a novel way to understand negative, self-directed emotions in response to others’ harms as rational, expressive, and potentially reason-giving experiences. (shrink)

Discussion of temptation has figured prominently in recent debates concerning instrumental rationality. In light of some particularly interesting cases in which giving in to temptation involves acting in accordance with one’s current evaluative rankings, two lines of thought have been developed: one appeals to the possibility of deviating from a well-grounded resolution, and the other appeals to the possibility of being insufficiently responsive to the prospect of future regret. But the current appeals to resolutions and regret and some (...) of the verdicts provided face some serious challenges. Building on recent work concerning instrumental rationality, and delving into some important complications concerning human psychology, I revisit the relevant cases of temptation and analyze them in a way that puts resolutions, rational failure, and regret in their proper places. In the process, I highlight and explain the significance of the neglected fact that resolutions can introduce effective anchor points, which can serve agents faced with temptation well, even if the resolutions are abandoned. (shrink)

This research examines the moderating role of regret aversion in reason-based choice. Earlier research has shown that regret aversion and reason-based choice effects are linked through a common emphasis on decision justification, and that a simple manipulation of regret salience can eliminate the decoy effect, a well-known reason-based choice effect. We show here that the effect of regret salience varies in theory-relevant ways from one reason-based choice effect to another. For effects such as the select/reject and (...) decoy effect, both of which were independently judged to be unreasonable bases for deciding, regret salience eliminated the effect. For the most-important attribute effect that is judged to be normatively acceptable, however, regret salience amplified the effect. Anticipated self-blame regret and perceived decision justifiability consistently predicted preferences and thus offer a parsimonious account of both attenuation and amplification of these reason-based choice effects. (shrink)

I begin this paper by discussing the difference between outweighing and canceling in conflicts of normativity. I then introduce a thought experiment that I call Crash Drive,and I use it to explain the nature of a certain kind of moral conflict as well as the appropriate emotional response – regret – on the part of the primary agent in this case. Having done this, I turn to a line of criticism opened by Bernard Williams and recently expanded by Jonathan (...) Dancy according to which archetypal examples of modern moral philosophies such as Kantianism cannot make sense of conflict and regret. Finally, I examine the general structure of such theories and explain how at least some of them can avoid this line of criticism. (shrink)

This paper analyses regret. On the basis of a number of examples, the case is made that regret is a negative affective state that has a perceived past choice as its object. More precisely, S regret...

When sporting agents fail through wrongful or faulty behaviour, they should feel guilty; when they fail because of a deficiency in their abilities, they should feel shame. But sometimes we fail without being deficient and without being at fault. I illustrate this with two examples of players, Moacir Barbosa and Roberto Baggio, who failed in World Cup finals and cost their teams the greatest prize in sport. Although both players failed, I suggest that neither was at fault and neither was (...) deficient. I argue that we can fail through no fault of our own because our abilities are always fallible. This fallibility means that to succeed – to achieve sporting glory – we must run the risk of failure. The appropriate emotion to feel over such failures is agent-regret. Sporting agents and observers should not take up what I call the ‘critical position’: the idea that someone who fails must be deficient or must have been at fault. This allows for a softer, but also more accurate, attitude towards our own failures and the failures of others. I end by suggesting that the fallibility of our abilities is made clear through playing or watching sport, and this can illuminate life more broadly. (shrink)

Because anticipated and retrospective regret play important roles in practical deliberation and motivation, better understanding them can illuminate the contours of human agency. However, the possibility of self-ignorance and the fact that we change over time can make regret—especially anticipatory regret—not only a poor predictor of where the agent will be in the future but also an unreliable indicator of where the agent stands. Granting these, this paper examines the way in which prospective and, particularly, retrospective (...) class='Hi'>regret can nevertheless yield important insight into the sorts of creatures we are, both generally and individually. The experience of retrospective regret can show a person she values something in a way she did not know or that she is (or was) a different person than she had thought, insights which can factor into forward-looking, or prospective, deliberation. Such instances of revelatory regret reveal something to the agent about herself as agent. I examine two cases of agential self-ignorance. In the first, the experience of regret reveals what the agent values, not only to others but even to the agent himself. In the second, the agent anticipates experiencing regret for an action but does not experience the regret, suggesting that the agent did not value the rejected alternative in the way she thought. Anticipatory regret is forward-looking and can play an important role in practical deliberation. But insofar as anticipatory regret flows from one’s imperfect judgment and prospection about oneself, retrospective regret can be an important corrective in helping the agent understand her own standpoint. (shrink)

Climate change has made pressing the question of why we do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By analogy to the puzzle of the self-torturer, I argue that even if interpersonal and intergenerational conflicts of interest were resolved, we may still end up in a regretful environmental state when we aim to maximize our net benefit derived from polluting activities. This is because a rational agent with transitive preferences making climate change decisions faces incentives to over-pollute. This is caused by (...) the presence of marginal costs that are uninformative of well-being in an uncertain and intertemporal decision problem. (shrink)

Roger Scruton is Britain's best-known intellectual dissident, who has defended English traditions and English identity against an official culture of denigration. Although his writings on philosophical aesthetics have shown him to be a leading authority in the field, his defence of political conservatism has marked him out in academic circles as Public Enemy Number One. Contrary to orthodox opinion, however, Roger Scruton is a human being, and Gentle Regrets contains the proof of it - a quiet, witty but also serious (...) and moving account of the ways in which life brought him to think what he thinks, and to be what he is. His moving vignettes of his childhood and later influences illuminate this book. (shrink)

This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of the relationship between regret and episodic memory, the temporal structure of ‘regretful memory’, the affective and evaluative dimension of regretful memory and the counterfactual dimension of regretful memory. Based on Husserl’s phenomenology, I offer an analysis of regret’s complex structures of intentionality and time-consciousness. Husserl held that episodic memory requires two temporal orientations on one’s own experience: the past now that one relives and the present now in which one does the (...) reliving. If memory generally entails two temporal perspectives, regretful memory brings in a third point of temporal reference: that now that could have been. Drawing on Hoerl and McCormack, I give an account of regret as a mnemic and counterfactual form of intentional consciousness that confronts an alternative past and attempts to negotiate between two essential yet conflicting features of its actual past: its contingency and its irreversibility. On this basis, I then draw on Bagnoli to offer a phenomenological theory of regretful memory as an emotional mode of valuing possibilities that belong to the past. (shrink)

This paper concerns regret, where regretting is to be understood, roughly, as mourning the loss of a forgone good. My ultimate aim is to add a new dimension to existing debate concerning the internal logic of regret by revealing the significance of certain sorts of cases—including, most interestingly, certain down-to-earth cases involving vague goals—in relation to the possibility of regret in continued endorsement cases. Intuitively, it might seem like, in continued endorsement cases, an agent’s regret must (...) be tied to the idea that the forgone good is no better than the achieved good but is also not fully made up for by the achieved good because the goods are different in kind. But this view is controversial. After describing a challenge to the view, as well as the main features of the debate regarding regret in which it figures, I appeal first to a fanciful case involving a set of ever-better options, and then to a more down-to-earth case involving a vague goal, to develop a defense of the opposing view that, even in continued endorsement cases, mourning the loss of a forgone good need not be tied to the idea that the loss of the good is not fully made up for by the gain of a preferred or incomparable good of a different kind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Collective Regret and Guilt and Heroic Agency:A Pro-Existential ApproachIonut UnteaIntroductory Discussion: Challenging the Supposedly "Rationally Refutable" Character of GuiltStudies in social psychology point out that feelings of guilt are more likely than feelings of regret to occur in an interpersonal context (Wagner et al. 1) marked by "interpersonal harm," or harm done to others (Berndsen et al. 55, 66). In keeping with these studies, in social ontology, (...) regret seems to involve an evaluation of the kind of wrongdoing that is out of someone's control (Konzelmann Ziv 488), while the feeling of guilt implies the self-attribution of blame over something that is connected, even in a loose manner, to a blameworthy action (Gilbert, "Group Wrongs" 65, 66n3).In order to advance the argument of the reasonableness of a person's feeling of guilt if that person is part of a group that has acted wrongfully, Margaret Gilbert distinguishes between feelings of personal guilt and feelings of collective guilt ("Group Wrongs" 76), with the latter still impacting on the individual feelings of guilt. From this point of view, a person may be "personally guiltless," but can still reasonably feel guilt if that person's group behaves in a morally unacceptable way ("Group Wrongs" 66). By distinguishing between personal and collective guilt, Gilbert intends to give an "intelligible" dimension to what she calls Jaspers's "dilemma" ("Collective Guilt" 135, 136). She emphasizes Karl Jaspers's hesitation in categorizing his own feeling of guilt for what his people have done: "There is a way that he 'cannot help feeling' which is 'rationally refutable'" (Gilbert "Collective Guilt" 135; Jaspers 74). As a philosopher, Gilbert argues, Jaspers finds this existential dilemma "extremely problematic" ("Collective Guilt" 135). Nonetheless, Gilbert also concedes that these two types of guilt may be difficult to distinguish in regard to their "phenomenological conditions" at the level of [End Page 59] the "pangs and twinges" experienced by each person, but rather on the basis of the "judgment or thought" involved with that feeling ("Collective Guilt" 135).Gilbert argues that "it is indeed intelligible for group members to feel guilt over the action in question" by virtue of what she calls a "foundational joint commitment," which brings together a number of people to "intend as a body" to carry out certain actions ("Collective Guilt" 136). Although not committed to the goal of showing the intelligibility of the feeling of membership guilt as is Gilbert, I favor the acceptance of a kind of reasonableness of such a feeling, even when it conserves its "rationally refutable" character. This even applies when membership guilt may not so easily be distinguished from personal guilt. Gilbert sees joint commitment as "authority-creating," in the sense that "a person or body" may become "authorized" to apply the collective intention to the concrete settings. This is realized by making decisions for the entire group, thus bringing the collective intention into effect ("Collective Guilt" 136). This joint commitment becomes binding for individual members of the group since once they commit themselves to the group's intention, "they are not in a position unilaterally to change the collective's mind." This does not apply in situations when "they may do so by mutual consent" ("Collective Guilt" 127). What I find concerning about Gilbert's involvement of the argument of the "authority-creating" ("Collective Guilt" 136) joint commitment within the dimension of membership guilt is precisely that it discourages any contestation of the authority that decides the content of the collective intention, unless this is done by "mutual consent" ("Collective Guilt" 127). This makes the members of the collective rather passive, and unwilling to challenge the authority generated through their participation in the joint commitment.This reluctance of the members of a collective body to challenge the authority that gives content to their collective intention can easily be identified in history and in the contemporary landscapes of political authority, especially in countries led continuously for decades by authoritarian leaders. In spite of the oppressive character of their leadership, these are very rarely contested, and then only by sporadic voices who fail to generate a coherent long-term commitment from other group members. In this sense, Gilbert's... (shrink)

Procedural justifications of democracy emphasize inclusiveness and respect and by doing so come into conflict with instrumental justifications that depend on voters’ competence. This conflict raises questions about jury theorems and makes their standing in democratic theory contested. We show that a type of no-regret learning called meta-induction can help to satisfy the competence assumption without excluding voters or diverse opinion leaders on an a priori basis. Meta-induction assigns weights to opinion leaders based on their past predictive performance to (...) determine the level of their inclusion in recommendations for voters. The weighting minimizes the difference between the performance of meta-induction and the best opinion leader in hindsight. The difference represents the regret of meta-induction whose minimization ensures that the recommendations are optimal in supporting voters’ competence. Meta-induction has optimal truth-tracking properties that support voters’ competence even if it is targeted by mis/disinformation and should be considered a tool for supporting democracy in hyper-plurality. (shrink)

Over time, research programs focusing on the processes that underlie dissonance and regret diverged to the point that the present literature only occasionally draws explicit connections between regret and consistency seeking processes. One of our aims in this chapter is to reestablish the connection between regret and consistency within the context of a theory that examines two independent factors that critically interact to enhance or diminish regret. The first of these is opportunity, which includes both perceptions (...) of past opportunities to make alternative choices and future opportunities to take corrective actions, and the second is mitigation, which is the ability to justify one's actions or otherwise engage regulatory processes that allow for the diminishment of regret. We examine both opportunity and mitigation separately before describing how the two may interact to elicit differential experiences of regret. (shrink)

It is often suggested that when opinions differ among individuals in a group, the opinions should be aggregated to form a compromise. This paper compares two approaches to aggregating opinions, linear pooling and what I call opinion agglomeration. In evaluating both strategies, I propose a pragmatic criterion, No Regrets, entailing that an aggregation strategy should prevent groups from buying and selling bets on events at prices regretted by their members. I show that only opinion agglomeration is able to satisfy the (...) demand. I then proceed to give normative and empirical arguments in support of the pragmatic criterion for opinion aggregation, and that ultimately favor opinion agglomeration. (shrink)

Recent research has provided compelling evidence that children experience the negative counterfactual emotion of regret, by manipulating the presence of a counterfactual action that would have led to participants receiving a better outcome. However, it remains unclear if children similarly experience regret’s positive counterpart, relief. The current study examined children’s negative and positive counterfactual emotions in a novel gain-or-loss context. Four- to 9-year-old children (N = 136) were presented with two opaque boxes concealing information that would lead to (...) a gain or loss of stickers, respectively. Half of the children chose between two keys that matched each box, whereas the other half were compelled to select one box because only one of the two keys matched. After seeing inside the alternative, non-chosen box, children were significantly more likely to report a change in emotion when they could have opened that box than when they could not have. The effects were similar for children who lost stickers and won stickers, and neither effect varied with age. These findings suggest that children may become capable of experiencing regret and relief around the same time, although their expression of these counterfactual emotions may vary with actual and counterfactual gains and losses. (shrink)

In his classic essay, "The Dilemma of Determinism", William James argues that the truth of determinism would make regret irrational. Given the central role of regret in our moral lives, James concludes that determinism is false. In this paper I explore the attitude of regret and show that James's argument is mistaken. Not only can we rationally regret events that were determined to occur, but we can also rationally regret events that had to occur.

Previous research on the role of negative emotions in social bargaining games has focused primarily on social emotions such as anger and guilt. In this article, we provide a test for behavioural differences between two prototypical decision-related negative emotions—regret and disappointment—in one-shot social dilemma games. Three experiments with two different emotion-induction procedures (autobiographical recall and imagined scenarios) and two different games (the ultimatum game and the 10-coin give-some game) revealed that regret increased prosocial behaviour, whereas disappointment decreased prosocial (...) behaviour. These results extend previous findings concerning differences between regret and disappointment to interdependent (social) situations. (shrink)

I examine the ‘momentous’ choices that one makes early in life – about career or spouse, for example – and I ask what it means to regret such choices at the end of one’s life. I argue that such regrets are almost meaningless because of the difficulty of imaginatively accessing a much earlier self. I then contrast long-term regret to remorse, and argue that the two are qualitatively different experiences because remorse involves another person as victim.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Inappropriate RegretClaire Pouncey (bio)Keywordsanxiety, inappropriate guilt, moral sentiments, supererogation, regretThis delightful and provocative vignette has many interesting clinical facets, and I thank Dr. Bailey for his candid introspection. For me, this essay calls attention to an asymmetry in our culture, in which women tend to feel more comfortable than men in expressing anxieties about our unpredictable and often dangerous world. Women's fears, however, often are dismissed or minimized, revealing (...) an overall social discomfort with expressed anxiety, and a sense that anxiety itself is, somehow, feminine. When I read Dr. Bailey's essay, I am struck that two self-aware men need the metaphors of war and heroism to address their own anxieties.The vignette builds around a soldier, Colin, who presents with guilt about having been deployed to Iraq, but not engaging in combat. Guilt is a moral sentiment, a feeling that one ought to have acted otherwise in a given situation. It is a self-imposed sanction for a moral failure. In mental health care, we use the term ‘inappropriate guilt’ to describe a clinical symptom commonly associated with depression. Clinicians understand inappropriate guilt as a manifestation of the self-criticism and low self-esteem often associated with depressive disorders. In Colin's case, it did fit with a constellation of symptoms that suggested depression. Dr. Bailey's essay explores the psychodynamics of Colin's guilt, and possible responses to it.As I understand the situation, Colin sees himself as having a moral obligation to exceed his contractual obligation to the military. In the terminology of ethics, he imposes upon himself a duty to be supererogatory, that is, a duty to go beyond the call of duty, which some moral philosophers have considered oxymoronic. For Colin to feel guilty about not engaging in combat, he must have understood a moral obligation to participate in combat that goes beyond his obligation to follow orders. It seems to me that soldiers have a nonmoral, contractual obligation to train, deploy, follow orders, and if circumstances so dictate, fight. But if the circumstances do not lead to combat (Nagel might call this good moral luck), it does not seem to me that a soldier has failed either a contractual or a moral obligation by not being sent into battle. Supererogation aside, to my mind, Colin's guilt is inappropriate: he is holding himself to an unreasonable moral standard, according to which he is required not only to do what the military demands, but also to sacrifice or suffer from the experience in some meaningful way.Although the notion of inappropriate guilt fits with the description of Colin's depression, it occurs to me that the word ‘guilt’ may be too strong here. Perhaps what Dr. Bailey is seeing is better characterized as ‘inappropriate regret’ that Colin missed “his last, best chance to be a hero.” ‘Regret’ is the sentiment that one could have (rather than should have) acted otherwise, perhaps to a better eventual end. Dr. Bailey agrees that Colin's guilt is inappropriate, that no one is ever required [End Page 233] to be a hero. But he seems to share, and even encourage, what I am calling Colin's ‘inappropriate regret,’ which suggests that if Colin had engaged in combat, he would not experience feelings of helplessness or insecurity in our uncertain world. What fascinates me is that Dr. Bailey accepts this premise, and even reflects on his own fears about self-protection in his own urban setting.Rather than challenging it, Dr. Bailey clearly shares Colin's concern that he may not be able to respond adequately should a real threat arise. Both therapist and patient seem to want reassurance that they can keep themselves and their families safe when danger strikes. But this is not a matter of achieving or going beyond the call of duty. Rather, it is an expression of familiar and diffuse anxiety that is unrelated to wartime. In the essay, heroism seems to serve as a metaphor, a filter that makes the expression of anxiety more palatable to both the patient and the therapist. I am fascinated that these two sensitive and introspective interlocutors need to filter their anxieties through... (shrink)

This paper generalizes the simple regret model by Bell in Operations Research 30(5), 961-981 and Loomes and Sugden in The Economic Journal 92(368), 805-824 to cope with the situation in which decision outcomes are multi-attributed. We propose a model that combines the simple regret model for ex ante preferences and the additive difference representation for ex post preferences. We first present a necessary and sufficient axiomatization of our model in Savage’s framework. The proposed model is composed of three (...) types of functions. One is a value function for each attribute. The others are attribute-dependent and holistic regret-rejoicing functions that capture trade-offs among value-differences of chosen and forgone outcomes for each attribute and among all attributes, respectively. We then provide constructive procedures for those functions and methods for consistency checks of the procedures. We, finally, conduct an experiment to estimate those functions in the two attributes case by means of the constructive procedure and give an application of the model and our findings. (shrink)

This is the first sustained study examining how the emotions of remorse and regret were manifested in Greek and Roman public life. By discussing the standard lexical denotations of remorse, Fulkerson shows how it was not normally expressed by high-status individuals, but by their inferiors, and how it often served to show defect of character.

One of the lines of investigation opened up by Wallace in The View from Here concerns the notion of regret: what it is, what it is rationally constrained by, and what are the proper objects of regret. A distinctive feature of Wallace's view is that regret is an intention-like state, which, whilst backward-looking, is bound up with our future directed practices of value. In this commentary, I set out Wallace's claims on regret, its rational constraints, and (...) its objects, and raise some worries about Wallace's position on each of these three issues. (shrink)

Regret and disappointment have in common the fact that they are experienced when the outcome of a decision is unfavourable: They both concern “what might have been”, had things been different. However, some regret and disappointment theorists regard the differences between these emotions as important, arguing that they differ with respect to the conditions under which they are felt, and how they affect decision making. The goal of the present research was to examine whether and how these emotions (...) also differ with respect to the way in which they are experienced. Participants were asked torecall aninstance of intense regret or disappointment andto indicate what they felt, thought, felt like doing, did, and were motivated to do during this experience (cf. Roseman, Wiest, & Swartz, 1994). Significant differences between regret and disappointment were found in every category. These differences were most pronounced for “action tendencies” (what participants felt like doing) and “emotivations” (what they were motivated to do). These results suggest that the two emotions have differential implications for future behaviour. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the role that regret does and should play in medical decision-making. Specifically, I consider whether the possibility of a patient experiencing post-treatment regret is a good reason for a clinician to counsel against that treatment or to withhold it. Currently, the belief that a patient may experience post-treatment regret is sometimes taken as a sufficiently strong reason to withhold it, even when the patient makes an explicit, informed request. Relatedly, medical researchers and (...) practitioners often understand a patient’s post-treatment regret to be a significant problem, one that reveals a mistake or flaw in the decision-making process. Contrary to these views, I argue that the possibility of post-treatment regret is not necessarily a good reason for withholding the treatment. This claim is justified by appealing to respect for patient autonomy. Furthermore, there are occasions when the very reference to post-treatment regret during medical decision-making is inappropriate. This, I suggest, is the case when the decision concerns a “personally transformative treatment”. This is a treatment that alters a person’s identity. Because the treatment is transformative, neither clinicians nor the patient him/herself can ascertain whether post-treatment regret will occur. Consequently, I suggest, what matters in determining whether to offer a personally transformative treatment is whether the patient has sufficiently good reasons for wanting the treatment at the time the decision is made. What does not matter is how the patient may subsequently be changed by undergoing the treatment. (shrink)

In Albert Camus' 1950 play Just Assassins, terrorists are at work in nineteenth-century Russia. They kill people, and they all believe that there is a superior moral reason for doing so. But they also know that killing is wrong. In their own view, they are innocent criminals; innocent, because their action is justified, but criminals, because they kill. So tacitly they conclude that they deserve punishment that will remove the regret from their shoulders. Their execution, by the same despotic (...) authorities they are attacking, completes their actions: regret, caused by justified killing, gets its counterpart. Regret is an interesting mental phenomenon. Some people say that feeling regret is irrational, or even that it is immoral. But surely the usual opinion is that in some situations regret is an appropriate way to react. An interesting question is what it means to say that sometimes it is 'appropriate' to feel regret. Do we have a moral obligation to feel regret sometimes? How could one have an obligation to feel anything, since, at least seemingly, feelings are not voluntary acts. If we do have a moral obligation to feel regret in some cases, does it follow that all good people are emotionally "hot," while "cool" persons, who are not able to feel deep regret, are bad? (shrink)

This dissertation is a defence of agent-regret and an exploration of its role in our lives. I argue that agent-regret shows that an agent takes seriously her status as an agent who impacts the world, but who only has fallible control over it. To accept responsibility for any outcomes, she must accept responsibility for unintended outcomes, too: agent-regret is part of being a human agent. In doing this, I try to defend and develop Williams’s own conception of (...) agent-regret. -/- In the first part, I explore the nature of agent-regret. Agent-regret is distinct from guilt because we can feel agent-regret without being at fault. I argue that several challenges that seek to reduce agent-regret to a form of guilt fail. I further argue that agent-regret takes as its object not only something one has done, but the fact that one did it; I discuss this in terms of what Bernard Williams called taking an “external” view on one’s own action. -/- I suggest that we can best understand the object of agent-regret as one’s responsibility for an outcome. I argue that this form of “responsibility” is conceptually separate from liability or answerability; it concerns whether the outcome can be ascribed to an agent. This is a restricted form of causal responsibility but retains its agential character. I suggest that we can be responsible for outcomes even when we did not intend to bring them about. -/- In the second part, I vindicate the propriety of agent-regret against the ideas that we are not responsible for unintended outcomes or that such responsibility is not important. I set out several challenges to this effect. I argue that we are responsible for unintended outcomes because in order to be responsible as agents at all, we must use fallible abilities. When we exercise these abilities but fail, we are responsible as agents for those unintended outcomes that arise. I then consider the importance of being responsible for particular unintended outcomes and analyse the idea that this affects our identities. I argue that responsibility for an outcome affects a form of identity, but that it does not involve essential features of a person. Instead, our responsibility for outcomes is a contingent feature that nonetheless plays an important role in our interpersonal interactions and self-conceptions. I argue that these reactions are appropriate, because our responsibility for particular outcomes is independently significant—but these reactions also lend this responsibility added significance as part of inescapable human practices. -/- Thus our responsibility for outcomes is important. Its importance means that it can serve as an appropriate object of agent-regret that vindicates the propriety of agent-regret. I end by considering several interesting features of agent-regret, including its expression and “pure” cases, which are cases where an agent feels agent-regret despite not regretting the result of her action. (shrink)