It’s common sense that we will likely regret decisions that result in negative outcomes and feel little to no regret about decisions that result in positive outcomes. A more subtle intuition is “action looms larger than inaction” (i.e. that we will experience more regret over a negative outcome if it stemmed from our actions than from our inaction). Being more directly and personally implicated as a cause of the negative outcome seems to elicit greater feelings of regret.

However, several intuitions about regret appear to conflict. For instance, a common notion is that when people refle...