Their hypothesis was that the child would indeed regret it, even though the decision was clearly correct—which would show that regret is not reliable information about the quality of one’s past decisions.
Food for thought! I guess System 1′s tendency to overvalue the present might cause us to discount the future as well as the past. I’m not quite sure to which degree I would consider this likely however. At least I personally usually do not regret decisions from the past that had positive effects on my well being, even if the alternative would be to experience that increased well being now.
But even then, the only purpose regret seems to have is to prevent us from repeating past mistakes. But this is 1) prone to overcorrecting and 2) we’d be much better off learning the lesson without having to suffer from that nagging feeling of regret for basically ever.
Food for thought! I guess System 1′s tendency to overvalue the present might cause us to discount the future as well as the past. I’m not quite sure to which degree I would consider this likely however. At least I personally usually do not regret decisions from the past that had positive effects on my well being, even if the alternative would be to experience that increased well being now.
But even then, the only purpose regret seems to have is to prevent us from repeating past mistakes. But this is 1) prone to overcorrecting and 2) we’d be much better off learning the lesson without having to suffer from that nagging feeling of regret for basically ever.