Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
submittedVersion
Publication Date
3-2008
Abstract
A considerable amount of past research has examined the effects of regret aversion on which options decision makers choose. However, past research has largely neglected to address the effect of regret aversion on the decision process. We conducted five experiments to examine the effect of making regret salient on decision process quality. We predicted that increased regret aversion would lead to more careful decision processing. The results consistently supported this prediction across the different decision situations, incentive structures, regret salience manipulations, and dependent variables used. In all experiments making regret salient led decision makers to take significantly longer to reach a decision. In Studies 2a, 2b, and 4 it also led participants to collect significantly more information before making a choice. Implications and future directions are discussed.
Keywords
Anticipatory regret, Decision process, Decision process quality, Regret aversion, Regret salience
Discipline
Organizational Behavior and Theory
Research Areas
Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources
Publication
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
Volume
105
Issue
2
First Page
169
Last Page
182
ISSN
0749-5978
Identifier
10.1016/j.obhdp.2007.08.006
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
REB, Jochen.
Regret Aversion and Decision Process Quality: Effect of Regret Salience on Decision Process Carefulness. (2008). Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 105, (2), 169-182.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/1002
Copyright Owner and License
Author
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2007.08.006