Do Children Who Experience Regret Make Better Decisions? A Developmental Study of the Behavioral Consequences of Regret

O'Connor, Eimear; McCormack, Teresa and Feeney, Aidan (2014). Do Children Who Experience Regret Make Better Decisions? A Developmental Study of the Behavioral Consequences of Regret. Child Development, 85(5) pp. 1995–2010.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12253

Abstract

Although regret is assumed to facilitate good decision making, there is little research directly addressing this assumption. Four experiments (N = 326) examined the relation between children's ability to experience regret and the quality of their subsequent decision making. In Experiment 1 regret and adaptive decision making showed the same developmental profile, with both first appearing at about 7 years. In Experiments 2a and 2b, children aged 6–7 who experienced regret decided adaptively more often than children who did not experience regret, and this held even when controlling for age and verbal ability. Experiment 3 ruled out a memory-based interpretation of these findings. These findings suggest that the experience of regret facilitates children's ability to learn rapidly from bad outcomes.

Viewing alternatives

Metrics

Item Actions

Export

You can export this page using these formats Digital Object Identifier - DOI

About

• Item ORO ID
• 86884
• Item Type
• Journal Item
• ISSN
• 0009-3920
• Project Funding Details

• Funded Project Name	Project ID	Funding Body
  Not Set	Not Set	E.S.R.C.

• Academic Unit or School
• Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) > Psychology and Counselling > Psychology
  Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) > Psychology and Counselling
  Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS)
• Copyright Holders
• © 2014 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.
• Depositing User
• Eimear O'Connor