Regret is an emotion felt when we realize we could have chosen an alternative choice that may or may not have been better. It’s felt when we imagine what could have happened if we had acted differently. While regret can help us learn from mistakes, it also takes a toll on our mental health, especially for people dealing with stress-related illnesses such as depression and anxiety. People react to regret in different ways, just like any other emotion. Some people might feel regret stronger than others by getting stuck in a negative mindset or feel disconnected from the rest of the world. The scientists want to better understand how regret works in the brain so that they can figure out how it harms us, and how it might help manage regret in a healthy way.
To explore this, Brian M. Sweis and team’s research article, “Distinct forms of regret linked to resilience versus susceptibility to stress are regulated by region-specific CREB function in mice” focused on how mice experience regret, using a task called Restaurant Row. This task involves mice making decisions about whether or not to wait for the food. The scientists looked at two types of mistakes during this task. One of them was skipping a good offer, classified as regret type I, and the other was accepting a bad one, known as regret type II. From this task, they found that mice sensitive to stress showed a greater amount of regret after skipping good offers, while mice resilient to stress showed more after accepting bad ones. These differences in feeling regret in the mice were tied to a protein called CREB known for affecting stress responses. The purpose of this research shows that not all regret is the same, and it depends on the type of mistake and how our brains are wired to handle stress and emotions.
A time where everyone felt some kind of stress was during COVID-19. It not only triggered widespread fear and stress in everyone, but also affected the mental health of people in many ways. One study found that self-blame regret, which refers to feeling guilty for past decisions during the pandemic, was linked to higher levels of fear, stress, and depression. This data was collected through the survey, and the findings suggested that regret when tied to fear and stress can play a significant role in how people respond to stressful situations.
Both studies show that regret is closely linked to mental health, particularly stress-related disorders. The mouse study by Sweis and team found that different types of regret are tied to how the brain handles stress. SImilarly, the COVID-19 study showed that self-blame regret was linked to higher fear, stress, and depression in people. Together, these findings suggest that regret can have a great impact on mental health, when combined with stress, so understanding how we process regret is key to reducing its negative effects.
References:
Durand-de Cuttoli, R., Martínez-Rivera, F. J., Li, L., Minier-Toribio, A., Holt, L. M., Cathomas, F., Yasmin, F., Elhassa, S. O., Shaikh, J. F., Ahmed, S., Russo, S. J., Nestler, E. J., & Sweis, B. M. (2022). Distinct forms of regret linked to resilience versus susceptibility to stress are regulated by region-specific CREB function in mice. Science advances, 8(42), eadd5579. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.add5579
[PDF] self-blame regret, fear of covid-19 and mental health during post-peak pandemic | semantic scholar. (n.d.). https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Self-blame-regret,-fear-of-COVID-19-and-mental-Belen/ab210650c97760a3c38271cb839dec932f67af43
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