Summary
Choosing is difficult when neither the possible outcomes nor their probabilities are clear. The wish for certainty, imagined alternatives, and the ways we defend a choice help explain why decisions can bring both regret and satisfaction.
At a glance
Important life choices often involve unknown outcomes and probabilities, making a definite answer difficult to reach. The need for cognitive closure can encourage deeper investigation or push us toward a rushed conclusion. After choosing, regret and satisfaction can coexist; there is no standard answer to what makes a decision best.
Should you change jobs once this year is over? It is an ordinary question, yet answering it can be difficult. People sometimes compare making decisions to gambling, but a gamble with explicitly stated odds at least gives you probabilities to work with. Even the familiar psychology experiment that asks you to choose between receiving ten units of money now and one hundred a year later specifies the amounts and timing of both options. Everyday decisions rarely come so neatly defined.
We act in the present while continually assessing what our actions might mean for the future. Yet when it is time to choose, we often cannot predict how events will unfold or how likely the different consequences are. Choosing a field of study, deciding whether to pursue further education or enter employment, and choosing a line of work all involve this kind of uncertainty. These are situations of decision-making under ambiguity: we cannot list every possible outcome, let alone calculate the probability of each. We still have to choose.
Not knowing which path to take can be deeply unsettling. There is a playful saying: “Children choose; adults take everything.” But when having everything is impossible, adults can become frustrated, anxious, and tearful too.
The wish for a definite answer amid uncertainty is known as the need for cognitive closure. We all share it, though its intensity varies. Some people become so anxious and impatient that they can hardly sit still. Others remain calmer, trusting that a way forward will emerge.
A strong need for closure can help or hinder deliberation. If anxiety drives us to gather more information, understand it thoroughly, and analyze it in greater depth, it can help us reach a judgment before a deadline. But anxiety can also leave us wanting only to settle the matter as quickly as possible. With limited information and an urgent need to decide, we may rush into a choice that is less rational than it could have been—and later regret it.
Regret often accompanies decisions, whether we act or choose not to. According to norm theory, we compare our current situation with a standard that we may have set beforehand or constructed afterward. When we construct that standard in hindsight, it often takes the form of what could have happened.
This is counterfactual thinking: mentally undoing an actual event and imagining an alternative outcome that could have occurred but did not. Such thinking provides the cognitive basis for regret, as we compare what happened with what might have happened instead.
Imagine someone looking back on a missed opportunity: “If only I’d told her how I felt before graduation. Maybe we would have become a couple.” This is additive counterfactual thinking: mentally adding an event or action that never happened and imagining how things might have turned out.
Now consider a different case, in which someone did confess their feelings and thinks, “If I hadn’t told her, we’d still be friends.” This is subtractive counterfactual thinking: mentally removing an event that happened and reconstructing the outcome without it. The continued friendship is the alternative this person imagines, rather than something they can know would have happened.
Do we regret what we did more than what we left undone? Psychologists have debated this for years, considering whether different forms of counterfactual thinking are associated with different intensities of regret. An early position held that, when the consequences are equally bad, people feel greater regret in the short term if the outcome resulted from acting than from failing to act. This stronger association between subtractive counterfactual thinking and regret became known as the action effect.
A later account suggested that, over longer periods, additive counterfactual thinking appears more strongly associated with regret. Its proposed explanation was that the sting of actions taken fades relatively quickly, while the pain of missed actions lasts longer.
The researchers who originally proposed the action effect disputed that explanation. Their exchange in research papers eventually led to a conclusion both sides could accept: regret requires bad consequences to become apparent, and the consequences of inaction take longer to emerge. On this account, measuring regret after a longer interval can make regret over what people failed to do appear stronger.
Regret is only one possible response to a choice. We can also feel that we chose reasonably well. Life after a decision brings both happiness and sadness, and once we are convinced that our choice was right, we can find evidence to support that conviction. Even when others consider the decision unwise and believe our lives have become worse since making it, self-deception may help us enjoy our present circumstances and defend the choice to them.
This can involve discarding information we would rather not know, automatically filtering out or blocking information that threatens our view, and interpreting what reaches us according to what we want to believe. We may selectively retrieve information or reconstruct memories in biased ways. If someone criticizes our decision, for example, we might stubbornly offer examples to prove that we are doing well while rebutting anything that suggests otherwise.
Self-deception can help us maintain a coherent, happy sense of our lives. It can also obscure danger and leave us willing to take risks we might otherwise recognize.
“I regret my decision” and “I’m doing well now” can both be true. The thoughts may coexist or take turns. The writer reflects that, more often, we scarcely have time to ask ourselves, “Am I regretting my choice or deceiving myself?” We may complain occasionally and stop to reflect from time to time, but much of daily life requires our attention in the present.
What, then, is the best decision? There is no standard answer. The same writer recalls that, in the year they completed their undergraduate degree, their class adviser repeatedly told the class, “Whatever you choose, you’ll regret it.”
Perhaps there will never be a best decision. But we can always do better at what is before us now.
Frequently asked questions
What is decision-making under ambiguity?
It involves choosing when we cannot list every possible outcome or calculate the probability of each. Choosing a field of study, further education versus employment, or a line of work can involve this uncertainty.
Can the need for cognitive closure help decision-making?
It can help when anxiety encourages gathering information, deeper analysis, and a judgment before a deadline. It can hinder judgment when the urge to end uncertainty leads to a rushed choice with limited information.
Can regret and satisfaction coexist after a decision?
Yes. Regretting a decision and feeling that life is going well can coexist or alternate.
