Why We Regret Our Choices

Once you've made a decision, you're left with one outcome - with all its inconveniences: a job with a long commute, an apartment with thin walls, an evening that turned out dull. The option you didn't choose stays a sketch. In a sketch, there are no traffic jams, no neighbors through the wall, no awkward pause at the table. You're comparing detailed reality with a sketch that has had everything dull crossed out.

This habit has a name - counterfactual thinking: mentally replaying what happened. "If only I'd left 10 minutes earlier," "if only I'd said yes." On its own, it can be useful: it's how you pull out a rule for next time. Regret is a side effect of this work, not a malfunction.

How loud it feels depends on how close the other outcome was. In competition footage, silver medalists often look more upset than bronze medalists: silver can easily imagine being gold, while bronze can imagine not winning a medal at all. Psychologists Victoria Medvec and Thomas Gilovich, with colleagues, found this when they analyzed footage from the 1992 Summer Olympics.

The more options you considered, the more material there is for "what if": every rejected one stays in your memory as a candidate. This is where the popular idea comes from that having lots of choices makes us unhappier. It's worth pausing here: when studies on this were combined, the average effect was close to zero - in some it was noticeable, in others it disappeared. So the evidence is weak: this isn't a law, but an effect that appears and disappears depending on the conditions.

Another pattern is more noticeable - the one over time. In the days right after, what you did stings more: you said too much, agreed without thinking, left first. But over years, people more often regret what they didn't do - not moving, not writing the letter, not having the conversation. Actions have consequences you can look at and write off. With inaction, only an open question remains, with nothing to close it.

The third factor is reversibility. As long as you can undo a decision, the comparison stays switched on; once the door has closed, your mind starts explaining why everything turned out fine. The evidence here is mixed, but the feeling is familiar: an endless "trial period" is more draining than a final "yes."