The Negative Thoughts Workbook by David A. Clark

Author:David A. Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2020-09-01T22:56:39+00:00

Regret: A Case of Buyer’s Remorse

There are several characteristics of decision making that increase the chance you’ll experience intense regret over your choice, a type of buyer’s remorse (the sinking feeling that you made a mistake after a purchase). The more factors present, the more likely you’ll experience the repetitive regretful thinking associated with depression, guilt, anxiety, and other types of personal distress.

Negative outcome. Persistent regretful thinking only occurs if a decision causes an undesirable outcome that has significant personal value. If a decision causes a highly desired outcome, our hearts are filled with rejoicing rather than regret. But we’ll feel regret if we think we’ve made a negative judgment about something important to our current life circumstance. Emily only started to feel regret about her marital decision when tension and conflict arose in her marriage. Being caught in a loveless marriage triggered repetitive thinking about the causes of her marital unhappiness and to question her past romantic decisions.

Failures of inaction. At first, regret is most intense when we’ve had a mistake, but over time, the focus shifts to regret over our failures to act. We tend to focus on “regrettable failures” because it’s much harder to understand why we chose not to do something that we now know would be better for us than knowing why we made a wrong decision (Gilovich 1995). Whenever we choose a course of action, it means that alternative choices were ignored or rejected. With repetitive regretful thinking, we focus more on these alternative choices or failures of action. When overwhelmed with feelings of regret, Emily would imagine what her life might have been like if she had continued the relationship with her first serious college boyfriend.

Fanciful thinking. Regret is worse when we believe there is a better alternative to what actually happened (Roese 1997). Because we can’t know the future, our imagination can run wild on how much better our life would have been had we made a different decision. Examples include: If only I had prepared more for the interview, I would have gotten my dream job. If I had bought a cheaper preowned car, I wouldn’t be so financially strapped. If I’d been more sociable and outgoing in my twenties, I’d now be in a loving intimate relationship. We are more likely to have these idealized dreams about what could have been when feeling depressed or experiencing a difficult life circumstance. Unfortunately, this type of thinking is unhealthy and often intensifies negative feelings of shame, guilt, and regret (Watkins 2008).

False hope. Hope is an important belief that helps us deal with difficulties and disappointments. But there is a type of false hope that can be self-defeating. It turns out that regret is more intense when we believe there’s still time to correct a bad decision. This has been called “the principle that opportunity breeds regret” (Roese and Summerville 2005, 1274). It’s a type of false hope because it doesn’t help us cope with our difficulties. This notion that “perceived opportunity breeds regret” is one reason educational decisions are the most common cause of regret.

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