Experiencing regret about a choice helps children learn to delay gratification

Abstract

Six-to-seven-year-olds decided whether to wait for a short delay to win a prize or for a longer period to win a different prize. Those who chose to take their prize after a short delay won two candies, but were shown that they would have won four candies if they had waited longer. We measured whether children regretted their choice not to wait. The next day, children were faced with the same choice again. Children who regretted choosing the short delay on Day 1 were more likely to delay gratification on Day 2 than children who had not regretted their previous choice. In a second study, we replicated this finding while controlling for intellectual ability and children's preference for 4 over 2 candies. This suggests that experiencing regret about a choice not to wait assists children in delaying gratification when faced with the same choice again.

Regret and Decision-Making: A Developmental Perspective

“…In another study (McCormack, O’Connor, Cherry, Beck, & Feeney, 2019), we examined whether experiencing regret helped children learn to delay gratification. We reasoned that if children regretted not waiting for a reward that turned out to be better than a more immediately available option, they might be more likely to wait in the future.…”

Thinking Counterfactually Supports Children’s Evidence Evaluation in Causal Learning

“…First, although the current study presented children with a relatively “lean” learning context, future work might consider how various contextual factors may mediate the effects of counterfactual reasoning on discriminating candidate causes. For example, prior work shows that counterfactual reasoning is closely related to a variety of social‐cognitive variables, including curiosity (FitzGibbon, Moll, Carboni, Lee, & Dehghani, 2019), the valence of an outcome (e.g., German, 1999; Mandel, 2003), the learner’s emotional state (e.g., regret and relief; McCormack, O'Connor, Cherry, Beck, & Feeney, 2019; McMullen & Markman, 2000; Weisberg & Beck, 2012), and their theory of mind (e.g., Guajardo & Turley‐Ames, 2004; Riggs & Peterson, 2000; Riggs, Peterson, Robinson, & Mitchell, 1998). Thus, there remain a variety of open questions regarding how these variables may interact with the current findings.…”

La imaginación y sus vínculos con la creatividad. Un análisis teórico desde la psicología del desarrollo

“…Otra manifestación temprana de esta capacidad humana de pensar alternativas es la predicción o proyección del futuro. Investigaciones recientes señalan que los niños y niñas utilizan el conocimiento pasado para predecir el futuro, tomar decisiones y planificar (ej., Burns, et al, 2021;McCormack et al, 2019). Los mundos posibles que se construyen son reflejos de la realidad cotidiana.…”