Been reading a lot (as usual) about this...apparently there is a huge difference in psychology between feeling regret and dissapointment. You could feel regret for various reasons, maybe you missed out on a large prize because you didn't pay attention to what you were supposed to do or because you didn't put in enough effort or you could feel it if you gave too much and you could have gotten away with "less money on the table"...Whatever. On the other hand if you simply lost something due to bad luck you just feel "disappointed" but you do not feel regret since there was nothing you could have done.
Why do we even care?? If all of these motivations led to the same behaviour then one should not care -- however it seems that thats not the case. You can learn from mistakes only if there is regret. Thats why its important to know when you have regret and when not.
Im trying to think of the last time I faced regret. Thing is it never happens like that since everything in life is a complicated combination of luck and effort...I never really know if it was my (lack) of effort or whether it would have happened anyway...most likely I think its always the latter. So the point is that two different observers (myself and an antagonist) would have different perceptions of who made the lesser effort and whether luck played a role: so its so subjective that there IS no pattern...
Finally what about the winners curse? Is it disappointment or regret? It could be regret that you overpaid given the new information revealed. But you would not have known that before anyway. So no regrets, only dissapointment?
And how can you test the difference?
Could it be that the heart recognises a failure and hence recognises regret, whereas the head rationalises it as mere disappointment, as passes it off as more circumstantial??
ReplyDeleteSo, you can feel the difference, if not see it, in most cases...