Consequences of regret aversion: effect of expected feedback on risky decision making Zeelenberg, M.; Beattie, J.; van der Pligt, J.; de Vries, N.K.
Published in:Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
DOI:10. 1006/obhd.1996.0013 Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):Zeelenberg, M., Beattie, J., van der Pligt, J., & de Vries, N. K. (1996). Consequences of regret aversion: effect of expected feedback on risky decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 65, 148-158. DOI: 10.1006/obhd.1996.0013 General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons).
Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. Previous research has considered the question of how anticipated regret affects risky decision making. Several studies have shown that anticipated regret forces participants towards the safe option, showing risk-aversion. We argue that these results are due to the previous confounding of the riskiness of the options with the feedback received. Our design unconfounds these factors, and we predict that participants will always tend to make regret-minimizing choices (rather than risk-minimizing choices). We present three experiments using a "choices between equally valued alternatives'* paradigm. In these experiments we manipulate whether the risky or safe gamble is the regret-minimizing choice by manipulating which gamble(s) will be resolved. As predicted, participants tend to choose the regret-minimizing gamble in both gains and losses and in both relatively high risk and relatively low risk pairs of gambles. We consider the implications of these results for the role of regret in choice behavior.O IMS Academic Press, Inc.
