Regrets, I’ve had a few …
massey-university
Wed Oct 24 2007 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Regrets, I’ve had a few …
Wednesday, 24 October 2007, 4:47 pm
Press Release: Massey University
Wednesday, October 23, 2007
Regrets, I’ve had a few …
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
Sydney J Harris
Not taking action causes Kiwis more regret than anything else, according to new research from the School of Psychology, and confirms the oft-held belief that it is what we did not do that which causes most angst. The investigation into the psychology of regret is the first phase of a PhD study by research officer Andy Towers.
Mr Towers says the research, the most in-depth survey on regret undertaken in New Zealand, using a random sample of 3000 people from the electoral roll, and received 650 responses.
“People regret the things they didn’t do, that is the inaction - both in the short and the long-term,” he says. “While overseas it has been found that in the short-term people regret more actions, in New Zealand this was not the case, perhaps indicating that New Zealanders are thinking about their short-term behaviour differently. The long-term regrets are the same as other countries, however – the lost opportunities causing more regret than the mistakes made.”
One surprise is the differences in regret between men and women, Mr Towers says.
“Even though we think we have moved on from traditional gender roles and stereotypes, these biases are still reflected in our regrets. For instance, it looks a bit like traditional stereotyping where, over the short-term at least, men’s regrets are focused around traditionally masculine aspects such as finance and occupational decisions and completely ignore family concerns whereas women’s regrets are much more varied, involving both occupational concerns and more traditionally feminine concerns such as family, parenting and health decisions.”
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Regrets tend to change as people age, notably the regret of not taking further education as stated by many older participants. “Time and time again the thing that came up is ‘If I had stayed at school I could have had a better job and my life would be different’ or ‘I would not have had this manual job that has wrecked me’.”
Older people were also most likely to be concerned with intimate relationships, notably the 40 to 50-year-olds. “They perhaps have a job or a career but want to build other connections,” Mr Towers says. “Middle-age seems to be about who to spend your life with. I had a number of people tell me ‘I wish I hadn’t married this person I am married to’ or ‘I wish I had asked that person to marry me’.”
Younger people who responded tended to regret things related to themselves, including their behaviour, whether regretting some form of behaviour or wishing they had “stood up” for themselves.
The second phase of Mr Towers’ research is to look at the reasons for regret. He believes that people regret less when they can point to a reason why they acted the way they did, or a moral justification for behaviour.
“Justifying behaviour shows the world we acted for a reason, that there was method in our madness, so even when it turns out badly we will not feel the full force of regret.”
However, his results also suggest that justification alone does not protect you from regret.
“It’s interesting to note that a number of people that had a strong theoretical justification for their behaviour still felt a lot of regret because, irrespective of the level of justification, they felt their behaviour still did not ‘fit’ with the person they thought they were. Basically, whether we can justify our behaviour is less important than whether we can accept that behaviour as being ‘in character’.”
ENDS
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