Temporal Adjustments in the Evaluation of Events: The “Rosy View”

Mitchell, Terence R.; Thompson, Leigh; Peterson, Erika; Cronk, Randy

doi:10.1006/jesp.1997.1333

Cited by 532 publications

(368 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Future research might follow up on this self-serving aspect more directly by examining people's emotions (and the beliefs about those emotions) at the time they experience them using, for example, methods of experience sampling (Scollon et al 2003) or day reconstruction (Kahneman et al 2004). Such methods may shed light on whether emotion appraisals are immediately skewed to the positive or become progressively more positive with the passage of time (Mitchell et al 1997;Van Boven and Ashworth 2007).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Praise for regret: People value regret above other negative emotions

2008

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What do people think about the emotion of regret? Recent demonstrations of the psychological benefits of regret have been framed against an assumption that most people find regret to be aversive, both when experienced but also when recalled later. Two studies explored lay evaluations of regret experiences, revealing them to be largely favorable rather than unfavorable. Study 1 demonstrated that regret, but not other negative emotions, was dominated by positive more than negative evaluations. In both studies 1 and 2, although participants saw a great deal of benefit from their negative emotions, regret stood out as particularly beneficial. Indeed, in study 2, regret was seen to be the most beneficial of 12 negative emotions on all five functions of: making sense of past experiences, facilitating approach behaviors, facilitating avoidance behaviors, gaining insights into the self, and in preserving social harmony. Moreover, in study 2, individuals made self-serving ascriptions of regret, reporting greater regret experiences for themselves than for others. In short, people value their regrets substantially more than they do other negative emotions. KeywordsRegret; Counterfactual; Affect; Emotion At first glance, it would seem uncontroversial to make the claim "regret is bad." After all, regret is a negative emotion hinging on the recognition that a personal action could have made the past better (Landman 1993;Zeelenberg 1999). Regret typically implies self-blame for unfortunate events (Connolly and Zeelenberg 2002). Individuals who ruminate on their regrets are more likely to report reduced life satisfaction and to experience difficulty coping with negative life events (e.g., Lecci et al. 1994;Schwartz et al. 2002). Regret is additionally problematic because of its biasing effect on decision-making, an idea central to regret theories in economics (e.g., Bell 1982; Connolly and Butler 2006). At a more basic level, regret (like any negative emotion) is intrinsically aversive, hence individuals are motivated to avoid it, even if this means sacrificing an objectively superior reward (Zeelenberg et al. 1996).Although early depictions of regret emphasized various dysfunctional aspects, newer conceptions additionally have emphasized its functional basis, particularly in terms of triggering behavior change aimed at remediation (Landman 1993;Roese and Summerville Correspondence to: Neal J. Roese. Markman et al. 2008;Roese 1994Roese , 1997. Counterfactual inference, by identifying a cause of a problem, helps make sense of negative experience. For example, a student thinking "If only I had studied harder" may on subsequent exams study harder and hence perform better. Counterfactual thinking may be useful both for approach behaviors (e.g., studying harder) as well as avoidance behaviors (e.g., staying away from parties the night before an exam). Further, in seeing causal connections between past actions and outcomes, counterfactual thinking and hence regret may help people to place events into context, thereby making ...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Praise for regret: People value regret above other negative emotions

2008

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“…As we mentioned earlier, people's memories of past aversive experiences tend to be overly 'rosy' (Mitchel et al, 1997), which may contribute to people's willingness to reexperience certain aversive experiences. However, the present findings indicate that, once people are expecting to re-engage in an experience, their memories actually become less rosy.…”

Section: Questions and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…For instance, we generally tend to focus on the positive while neglecting the negative memories of an experience (Mitchel, Thompson, Peterson, & Cronk, 1997;Sutton, 1992) and we have difficulty remembering the intense pain of an experience when we are in an incongruent 'cold' state (Read & Loewenstein, 1999). This kindness of our memory subsequently creates less aversive expectations and may entice us into partaking in the experience once more.…”

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confidence: 99%

The pain was greater if it will happen again: The effect of anticipated continuation on retrospective discomfort.

Galak¹,

Meyvis²

2011

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Across 7 laboratory studies and 1 field study, we demonstrated that people remembered an unpleasant experience as more aversive when they expected this experience to return than when they had no such expectation. Our results indicate that this effect results from people's tendency to brace for unpleasant experiences. Specifically, when faced with the anticipated return of the experience, people prepare for the worst, leading them to remember the initial experience as more aversive. This bracing can be reduced either by limiting people's self-regulatory resources or by denying them the time to brace. These results indicate that people's tendency to remember aversive experiences as less unpleasant than they actually were (as demonstrated in prior research) does not necessarily imply that people are willing to re-engage in these experiences—because the anticipation of repeating the experience may counteract the initial memory bias.

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“…It has been found that individuals seem to have a "rosy view" regarding life events that are commonly supposed to have positive connotations, such as holidays. Such occasions are predicted to be and remembered to have been more positive than they were actually experienced (Mitchell et al, 1997). The congruence between anticipation and memory may be the result of a desire to avoid dissonances.…”

Section: On the Divergence Between Wanting And Likingmentioning

confidence: 97%

Disentangling motivational and experiential aspects of “utility” – A neuroeconomics perspective

Witt¹,

Binder

2013

Journal of Economic Psychology

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractAlthough decision makers are often reported to have difficulties in making comparisons between multi-dimensional decision outcomes, economic theory assumes a uni-dimensional utility measure. This paper reviews evidence from behavioral and brain sciences to assess whether, and for what reasons, this assumption may be warranted. It is claimed that the decision makers' difficulties can be explained once the motivational aspects of utility ("wanting") are disentangled from the experiential ones ("liking") and the features of the different psychological processes involved are recognized.

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Temporal Adjustments in the Evaluation of Events: The “Rosy View”

Cited by 532 publications

References 24 publications

Praise for regret: People value regret above other negative emotions

Praise for regret: People value regret above other negative emotions

The pain was greater if it will happen again: The effect of anticipated continuation on retrospective discomfort.

Disentangling motivational and experiential aspects of “utility” – A neuroeconomics perspective

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