The Regret Elements Scale: Distinguishing the affective and cognitive components of regret

Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2016, Vol 11, Issue 3

Abstract

Regret is one of the most common emotions, but researchers generally measure it in an ad-hoc, unvalidated fashion. Three studies outline the construction and validation of the Regret Elements Scale (RES), which distinguishes between an affective component of regret, associated with maladaptive affective outcomes, and a cognitive component of regret, associated with functional preparatory outcomes. The present research demonstrates the RES’s relationship with distress (Study 1), appraisals of emotions (Study 2), and existing measures of regret (Study 3). We further demonstrate the RES’s ability to differentiate regret from other negative emotions (Study 2) and related traits (Study 3). The scale provides both a new theoretical perspective on regret, and a tool for researchers interested in measuring post-decisional regret.

Authors and Affiliations

Joshua Buchanan, Amy Summerville, Jennifer Lehmann and Jochen Reb

Keywords

Related Articles

Are medical treatments for individuals and groups like single-play and multiple-play gambles?

People are often more likely to accept risky monetary gambles with positive expected values when the gambles will be played more than once. We investigated whether this distinction between single-play and multiple-play g...

Not all streaks are the same: Individual differences in risk preferences during runs of gains and losses

Runs of gains and losses are particularly salient to decision makers because of their perceived departure from randomness, as well as their immediate impact on the financial status of the decision makers. Past research h...

An IRT forecasting model: linking proper scoring rules to item response theory

This article proposes an Item Response Theoretical (IRT) forecasting model that incorporates proper scoring rules and provides evaluations of forecasters’ expertise in relation to the features of the specific questions t...

Deliberation versus automaticity in decision making: Which presentation format features facilitate automatic decision making?

The idea of automatic decision making approximating normatively optimal decisions without necessitating much cognitive effort is intriguing. Whereas recent findings support the notion that such fast, automatic processes...

The influence of group decision making on indecisiveness-related decisional confidence

Indecisiveness is an individual difference measure of chronic difficulty and delay in decision making. Indecisiveness is associated with low decisional confidence and distinct patterns of pre-choice information search be...

Download PDF file
  • EP ID EP678244
  • DOI -
  • Views 121
  • Downloads 0

How To Cite

Joshua Buchanan, Amy Summerville, Jennifer Lehmann and Jochen Reb (2016). The Regret Elements Scale: Distinguishing the affective and cognitive components of regret. Judgment and Decision Making, 11(3), -. https://europub.co.uk/articles/-A-678244