Effects of Coping Style in Revisiting the Experiences of Regret
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Cheng, Yi
Abstract
Regret is the emotion that we experience when realizing or imagining that our current situation would have been better, if only we had decided differently. It is an unpleasant feeling, coupled with strong wishes to undo the current situation (Zeelenberg & Pieters, 2007). Because of its negative feelings about the status quo, it was usually considered as an indicator of bad decision making in past research. However, research has also found that regret has its positive functionality, and compared to other negative emotions, regret had positive more than negative evaluations. Therefore, the present study attempts to test two different paths of regret affecting psychological adjustment and behavior improvement. Depending on the different ways of people revisiting their regret experiences, I first propose two types of thinking style stems from regret, instrumental and ruminating. Instrumental thinking refers to the upward counterfactual thinking about the process of decision making; ruminating thinking indicates fail to disengage from the unfavorable outcome, then I test the corresponding positive and negative consequences of these two thinking styles. According to the result of study 1, regret induced instrumental and ruminating thinking. Ruminating thinking mediated the relationship between regret and negative psychological adjustment. Instrumental thinking elevated positive psychological adjustment, but had no buffer effect on depression and anxiety. Study 2 was a longitudinal study which focused on regret experiences in academic domain. In addition to replicating the results of study 1, It was also found that instrumental thinking resulting from regret enhanced participants’ upturn intention and behavioral improvement.
Subjects
regret
counterfactual thinking
instrumental thinking
ruminating thinking
psychological adjustment
self-improvement
Type
thesis
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