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Do Children Who Experience Regret Make Better Decisions? A Developmental Study of the Behavioral Consequences of Regret
Author(s) -
O'Connor Eimear,
McCormack Teresa,
Feeney Aidan
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.12253
Subject(s) - regret , psychology , developmental psychology , interpretation (philosophy) , social psychology , cognitive psychology , computer science , programming language , machine learning
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.