What Do You Regret The Most?

Earlier this semester, Loyola Alumnus and current MD/PhD student, Brian Sweis, came to Loyola University Chicago to discuss the research being done in the Redish Lab. He used the article "Behavioral and neurophysiological correlates of regret in rat decision-making on a neuroeconomic task" written by Adam Stein and David Redish to explain the study. The study focused on two parts of the brain: the oribtofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventral striatum (vStr), which are important in decision-making and reward computations.

We cannot ask a rat to define what it means to feel regret, but we can examine their behavior and brain activity. Stein and Redish developed a "restaurant row" in which an enclosure with pathways lead to "restaurants" that served different types of food after a certain amount of time. As a rat reached a restaurant, a tone would sound, telling the rat how long it would have to wait for food. This is synonymous with waiting to be seated at a restaurant. Some rats preferred certain foods over another, such as chocolate over a banana. The rats were given 1 hour to eat as much as they can, while only being able to move in one direction.

It was observed that if the rat chose to move onto the next restaurant and received something worse, it would briefly look back at the previous restaurant. Image recordings showed brain activity was synonymous to entering that restaurant. This finding suggested that animals other than humans feel regret.

This had me wondering what are some of the most common regrets people have. In his article, "When people look back on their lives, what are common regrets they have?", Bradley Voytek, an Assistant Professor at USC, outlines his findings. The main sources of regret, in order were: romance, family, education, career, finance, parenting, health, "other", friends, spirituality, community, leisure, and self (Voytek). His findings also showed differences between sexes, level of education, and the type of regret. Women regretted situations of family and romance, while men regretted issues concerning work and education. Individuals who had higher levels of education tended to have "a more acute sensitivity to aspiration and fulfillment" (Voytek). Furthermore, although an action was more regretful than an inaction, an inaction regret tended to last longer.

In an article written by Rachel Gillet, a careers reported at Business Insider, all of the main sources of regret can be traced down to a single point- worrying. Research done at Cornell University found that people wished they hadn't spent so much time of their lives worrying (Gillett). Their advice was to take a positive step forward by completely eliminating worry from your life. Interestingly, a key characteristic of worry is that "we worry when there is actually nothing concrete to worry about" (Gillet).

Source(s):
A. P. Steiner, A. D. Redish (2014) “Behavioral and neurophysiological correlates of regret in rat decision-making on a neuroeconomic task” Nature Neuroscience 17:995-1002.

https://www.quora.com/When-people-look-back-on-their-lives-what-are-common-regrets-they-have

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-common-regrets-in-life-from-people-who-have-them-2015-9

Image Source(s):

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n7/images/nn.3745-F1.jpg

https://www.myubiquity.com/wp-content/uploads/TOK_Regrets.jpeg