Regret in decision-making: When maintaining the status quo leads us to regret

Abstract

The research into decision-making has shown that people express less regret in a repeating choice than in a switching choice (i.e., the status quo effect). However, recent research has suggested that when a prior experience was negative, less regret was expressed in a switching choice than in a repeating choice (i.e., the reversal of the status quo effect). We conducted a replication using different scenarios to examine the conditions in which those effects would occur. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the valence (positive, negative) of a prior experience and asked the participants to rate how much regret they thought the decision-maker would have felt. As predicted, the status quo effect occurred in the positive-experience condition, and the reversal of it occurred in the negative-experience condition. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the levels of the decision-maker's responsibility. The results suggested that a stronger reversal effect was observed in the high responsibility condition. The limitation and the implication of these findings for regret research are discussed.