The Power of Regret

Early in the book, Pink compares human emotions to a stock portfolio. People can minimize risks and gain rewards by investing in a diverse group of stocks rather than overvaluing a few. In the same way, we shouldn't overvalue and undervalue certain feelings.

Our negative emotions are just as important as positive ones. Fear, for example, helps us to avoid danger. And regret is the most powerful of our negative emotions.

Pink describes regret as more of a process than a feeling. It combines our ability to think of the past and future with our capacity for imagining things that haven't really happened. We look back on a past action. We imagine that we made a different choice. Then we jump to the future and project an alternative outcome – a better one. We think that if we'd chosen differently, our current situation would improve.

Regret requires complex thought, so it doesn't usually develop in children until they're six. It involves comparing our current situation with an imagined one and assigning blame to ourselves. We don't regret things that we believe to be someone else's fault. We only regret when we think we're responsible for the outcome.

The "American Regret Survey" that Pink conducted in 2020 was the largest quantitative analysis of American attitudes about regret to date. 4,489 people participated.

How common is regret? Pink's survey found that it's nearly universal. He asked how commonly participants look back on their lives and wish they'd done some things differently. Only one percent of the population said they never do this, 43 percent do it frequently or all the time, and 82 percent do it at least occasionally. Pink shares evidence from a range of other research confirming that regret is both common and important to people.

And what do people regret? Pink describes research from 1949 through 2011 which found a wide range of regrets. Amusingly, the 1949 Gallup survey asked Americans what they considered their biggest mistake, and the most popular answer was that they didn't know!

The "American Regret Survey" asked participants to write their most significant regret. Like previous surveys, it found regrets in the domains of education, family, relationships, career, and more. Looking at the data, Pink saw words and phrases repeating themselves. He looked at the evidence and found that most of the regrets fell into four categories. The "What" varied, but there were consistent patterns of "Why."

The first category is what he calls "foundation regrets." These have to do with stability. Wise choices in this area of life set us up to stay healthy and secure. But a lot of the time, we don't make wise choices.

One survey participant says he regrets not saving money. Another regrets not getting better grades , and yet another regrets smoking.

Regrets about our health, our education, and our finances all say the same thing – "Why wasn't I more responsible?" We believe that more careful choices could have put us in a better position in life and helped us live up to our aspirations.

Most foundation regrets happen because we make choices focused on the present rather than the future. Maybe we drink because it feels good right now. Or perhaps we slack off on our studies because it's more fun to do something else.

It can be hard to even conceive of the effects of our choices over time, like how much money we might make if we invest in the long term. Whereas it's easy to understand what that burger's going to taste like!

It can take time to be conscious of our foundation regrets. Pink found that older survey respondents had more of them.

Once done, our actions are hard to undo. We can't get back money we've already spent. But when we let our regrets about the past guide us, we can take steps today to improve our security in these domains for tomorrow.

The second type of regrets is the opposite. Pink calls them "boldness regrets." We regret the risks not taken, the inner call we neglected to listen to. We imagine that our lives would be more exciting and rewarding if we'd taken a chance .

Pink shares the story of a man who met a woman on an international train. They forged a strong connection, and the man offered to leave the train with her. But she said, "My father will kill me." He handed her his address, she stepped off, and they never saw each other again. What if he'd gotten off the train? He wonders four decades later.

Others regret being shy and not speaking up more. Boldness regrets are regrets of inaction. And Pink's survey found "inaction regrets" to be nearly twice as common as "action regrets." Research in China, Japan and Russia had similar conclusions.

When we act, we get to see the consequences unfold. But when we neglect to act, all consequences stay in our imagination. We regret the "What ifs?" These regrets draw strength from the fact that the unrealized possibilities are vast. So many things might have happened if we'd taken that chance! We regret missed possibilities for growth – for becoming the person we think we could have been.

The lesson of our boldness regrets is clear: take the chance.

The third category is "moral regrets." It's the smallest category, making up 10 percent of the regrets surveyed, but these regrets tend to be long lasting. They occur when we're faced with a choice and choose an option we believe is morally wrong.

Moral regrets are when we tell ourselves, "If only I'd done the right thing."

They're a complicated category because people have different ideas of morality. Pink refers to Jonathan Haidt's book on psychology, titled "The Righteous Mind." Haidt's research shows that we make moral judgments instinctively. Our first reaction is visceral on whether something is right or wrong. Only then do we use logic to justify it.

Some of these visceral reactions are universal. No matter our background, most people would feel it's wrong to harm an innocent person.

But Pink notes that other aspects of morality are culturally relative . For people who are more politically conservative, including many people from cultures outside of North America and Europe, morality has a wider domain of influence than it does for more liberal people. It can include loyalty to your group, respect for the sacred, and following authority.

We all value aspects of purity. For instance, we want to avoid disease. But cultural ideas of purity can be broader, such as maintaining chastity or not getting abortions. Violating these taboos feels wrong to some people – and some groups of people – but not to others.

Whatever your ideas of morality, when we do something that goes against them, we tend to regret it deeply. Maybe that's cheating on a spouse, bullying a classmate, or not joining the military – if we felt it was important to serve our country.

Pink claims our tendency toward moral regrets suggest that, at the core, we want to be good people. So, when in doubt, we'll feel better about ourselves if we do the right thing.

Finally, there are "connection regrets." Pink found these to be the most frequent kind. These happen when relationships dissolve or remain unresolved.

Maybe we fall out of touch with a friend. Perhaps we become more distant from a family member than we'd like to be. These regrets sometimes arise after the other person's death. More often, we experience them when the person is still alive, and we may wonder if we should reach back out or not.

Harvard's famous "Study of Adult Development," also known as the "Grant Study," was the longest study of wellbeing done on a single group. It followed 268 men over 80 years, gathering data on many factors such as their bodies, their finances, and their intelligence.

While it focused primarily on a limited sample size of American men, its conclusion was clear: the best predictor of happiness and longevity in participants was close relationships. These include social support, community connections, marriage, family, and friendships – all of the areas where Pink's survey respondents experienced connection regrets.

The lesson from these is similar to the one of boldness regrets: no matter how apprehensive we feel, it's worth reaching out.

Regrets can be further defined by whether they relate to opportunity or obligation. More often than not, like with boldness regrets, we regret not becoming who we could have been. This tends to be a bittersweet feeling because we're not living up to our ideal for ourselves.

With other regrets, like many foundation regrets, we regret not doing what we feel we should have done. These regrets are more likely to spur us into action.

So, what can we do about our regrets? Pink covers this in a few chapters, with less detail compared to his category descriptions. It partly depends on whether we regret something we did, or something we didn't do.

In the case of action regrets, we can strive to make the situation better if possible. Can we apologize for an action we regret doing? Or maybe we want to cover up that terrible tattoo. We can also change the way we think about our regret by focusing on how things could have been worse, or what the upside is to the regretful situation. We can tell ourselves, "At least…" Someone might regret their marriage, for example, but at least it resulted in the birth of a child they love.

And some regret management strategies apply to all regrets. We benefit from discussing our regrets with others. And we can look at them with an analytical eye to decide how to improve in the future.

Maybe we'll reach out to that old friend or start saving more of our paycheck. It might be too late to change what we've done – but we can change what we do next. There’s more detail to it in the book, but in a nutshell, that's how regrets can motivate us to be better.

"The Power of Regret" is an interesting read on an unusual topic. Given how powerful the ideal of having no regrets is across countries and cultures, it's useful to examine the reasons why we experience this feeling and the useful functions it can serve.

The book's key insight is that we can divide regrets by motivation rather than by topic. Our choices look so different, but the reasons behind them are often similar. Looking at human regrets in this way sheds light on what we value and what we need.

Pink's research is innovative, and while more of his examples are U.S.-centric, he makes efforts to include research from different countries and find common ground across cultures. His own research forms the core of this fairly concise book. It's quick and easy to digest. And if you want to engage more with the topic of regret, you too can participate in the "World Regret Survey."

Pink's core argument is that we benefit from regrets for self-improvement. But the discussion of how we can do this is less fleshed out than the categories of regret.

And some types of regrets, those that don't fall into the four groups, are left out of his discussion. Should these really be dismissed as unimportant? Wouldn't it strengthen Pink's argument if he showed that smaller regrets, or those that don't fit his four groups, have value as well?

And why did Pink choose to study regret in the first place? He doesn't say. Many nonfiction authors use personal stories as a focal point, but Pink's use of personal examples is light. It might have been nice to see more of these.

On the other hand, it's insightful to hear from a wide variety of people who regret different things. Each chapter includes several examples from Pink's surveys or elsewhere, and each chapter begins with three regrets quoted from Pink's research.

These quibbles aside, "The Power of Regret" is a thoughtful read that largely delivers on its promises. It makes a convincing, evidence-based argument that regrets have value. And it looks at the topic with fresh eyes.

On the whole, we recommend this book. You probably won't regret reading it!

"The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward," by Daniel H. Pink is published by Canongate.

That’s the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.