Regret of inaction
Regret of inaction is regret about something a person did not do: the application not sent, the apology not made, the trip not taken. Studies from the 1990s found that people's biggest regrets in life tended to be things they had failed to do. They also found that regrets about things done tended to sting more in the short term, while regrets about things left undone weighed more over the long run.
Years after he decided against applying for a transfer abroad, Tomas still thinks about it on slow Sundays. A choice he made that same year, to quit a course, rarely comes to mind.
It isn't a judgment on a life or a sign that something is wrong. Regret is common and a regret of inaction is one way of looking back. If regret comes with thoughts of not wanting to be here, please talk to someone today.
If you or someone you know is having a difficult time, free support is available.
In an emergency, call your local emergency number.
How it shows
At work
Thinking about the application not sent, the project not pitched or the move not made, long after the moment passed. The regret may return when someone else takes the path.
In close relationships
Replaying the call not made, the visit not paid or the words not said, especially when the chance can no longer be taken. Regret may rise at anniversaries and reunions.
In ourselves
A recurring “I wish I had” about a path never started. The thought often attaches to a hope about who the person would become, more than to a particular outcome.
How it differs from similar ideas
Hindsight bias
Hindsight bias is the sense after the fact that an outcome could have been seen coming. Regret of inaction is about a chance not taken. The two often come together, and hindsight can make the chance look clearer than it was when it passed.
Rumination and worry
Rumination is the repetitive going over of a problem or feeling. Regret of inaction is the subject of some of what gets gone over. A person can carry the regret without the loop, and the loop can run on regrets of action as well.
Self-discrepancy
Self-discrepancy is the gap between how a person sees themselves and the self they hope or feel they ought to be. In 2018 studies by Shai Davidai and Thomas Gilovich, people's most enduring regrets came more often from the hoped-for side of that gap, so the two ideas overlap. A regret about something done can come from that gap too.
What it doesn’t mean
It doesn't mean doing nothing always brings regret. The research describes how regrets are felt over time. It compares what people report feeling, not how choices turned out.
It doesn't mean every path not taken is mourned. In the 1998 studies, some inaction regrets were wistful, with feelings like nostalgia, and others brought despair.
An example: Ines, two choices from one year, and what each one is like later
Ines is 28. In one spring she does two things. She sends an angry email to her manager after a bad meeting. And she does not apply for a design fellowship in another city, because the deadline falls in a busy week.
- The week after The email is the thing she cannot stop thinking about. Her stomach drops each time she sees her manager's name. The fellowship barely crosses her mind.
- Three years on Her manager left the company long ago and the email is a story she tells at parties. A friend mentions a fellowship in that same city, and Ines stops mid-sentence.
- At forty She is doing well at a job she picked. On long train rides she sometimes imagines the other city. She cannot say what she thinks she would have found there.
- Dinner with the friend who did apply The friend says it was lonely and badly paid. Ines says, “I know. I still think about it.” The friend says, “That's the part I do not get.”
The action regret is loud at first and has faded by the second scene. The inaction regret is faint at first and still comes back at forty, with an imagined version of the other city that the friend's account does not match. The story does not say whether she should have applied.
The story follows the shape the research describes: regret of action tends to hurt more in the short term, and inaction is regretted more over the long run. The 1995 review describes processes that ease the pain of a regretted action over time and keep up the pain of a regretted inaction, and says the two differ in how readily they come to mind. The gap between the imagined city and the friend's report fits that account. A single person's life is not evidence for any of it. Ines could as easily be someone whose regrets run the other way.
A different story would point elsewhere. If Ines had sent the email and lost her job, the action regret might have lasted. If she had thought of the fellowship fondly as a road not taken with no pull on her, that is the wistful kind of inaction regret the 1998 studies found alongside the troublesome kind. If the regret came with a heavy low mood about much more than the fellowship, it may not be mainly about the fellowship at all.
What the research shows
The research on regret of inaction mostly asks people about their own regrets, by survey, interview and scenario. The studies below cover the first report of the pattern, a large replication of it, a joint study by researchers who had disagreed about it, a national telephone survey and a rival account of what regret tracks.
Across surveys, interviews and scenarios, people's biggest regrets leaned toward what they did not do, and in a national telephone survey those regrets lasted longer. A 2022 replication found the time pattern again with weaker effects, and one of its four studies did not show it. A joint study by the researchers who had disagreed found some regrets of inaction to be wistful and others to bring despair. What regrets track is argued over: perceived opportunity ahead, or opportunity lost. Most of this is self-report about a regret the person picked, and none of it shows whether acting would have turned out better.
People's biggest regrets tended to be things they had failed to do, and the pain of action was greater in the short term
In 1994, Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Husted Medvec reported telephone surveys, written questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. In them, people's biggest regrets tended to involve things they had failed to do in their lives.
This conflicted with research on counterfactual thinking, which indicated that people regret unfortunate outcomes that stem from actions taken more than identical outcomes that result from actions foregone. The authors reconciled the two by showing a time course: actions cause more pain in the short term, and inactions are regretted more in the long run. Support came from two scenario experiments about the short- and long-term regrets of others, and from an experiment in which people reported their own regrets of action and inaction from two time periods.
Doesn’t show The abstract gives no sample sizes and does not say who took part. Most of the evidence is what people say about regrets and what they predict for others, and it does not follow one person's regret across the years. Biggest regret does not measure how much distress the regret causes day to day.
A large online replication in 2022 found the time pattern again, with weaker effects
In 2022, Siu Kit Yeung and Gilad Feldman repeated four of the 1994 studies in one preregistered online data collection. The 988 participants were Americans recruited on Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Three of the repeated studies supported the original findings, with weaker effects. The fourth did not show the pattern. In an extension, action was seen as carrying more responsibility than inaction, in the short term and in the long term.
Doesn’t show The abstract does not say what the study that did not replicate asked, and the authors say follow-up work is needed to explain it. They list possible reasons: changes they made to the methods, a shift in what action and inaction mean, and the difference between imagined and real-life regrets. The sample was online workers in the US answering in one sitting, and it does not follow anyone's regrets over time.
Regrets of inaction brought wistfulness in some cases and despair in others
In 1998, Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Husted Medvec and Daniel Kahneman, who had disagreed in print, ran three studies together on the emotional profile of action and inaction regrets. Gilovich and Medvec had argued that the pain of regrettable inaction lingers longer. Kahneman had argued that long-term regrets of inaction are largely wistful and not terribly troublesome.
Action regrets elicited mainly “hot” emotions such as anger. Inaction regrets elicited both wistfulness, such as nostalgia, and despair, such as misery. The authors concluded that some inaction regrets are wistful, as Kahneman argued, while others are troublesome, as Gilovich and Medvec maintained.
Doesn’t show The abstract gives no sample sizes and does not say how many inaction regrets fell into each group or what separates them. The studies do not say which regrets will fade.
In a national telephone survey, regrets of inaction lasted longer than regrets of action
In 2011, Mike Morrison and Neal Roese used a random-digit telephone survey of a representative sample of Americans. Respondents reported a salient regret, then answered questions about it.
Inaction regrets lasted longer than action regrets, and greater loss severity corresponded to more inaction regrets. Regrets more often focused on situations that could not be fixed than on ones that could. Women more than men reported love rather than work regrets, and overall regrets more often focused on romance than on other life domains.
Doesn’t show Each person reported one salient regret, so the survey cannot compare one person's regret of action with their regret of inaction. People choose which regret to report, and the abstract gives no sample size.
Regret was strongest for outcomes that could no longer be changed
In 2009, Denise Beike, Keith Markman and Figen Karadoğan tested a proposal that regret is driven by lost opportunity. These are outcomes that could have been changed in the past, can no longer be changed and carry low psychological closure.
In Study 1, regretted experiences in the most commonly regretted life domains were perceived as offering the least opportunity for improvement in the future. In Study 2, people experienced the most regret for outcomes that were not repeatable. In Study 3, higher perceived past than future opportunity and low psychological closure predicted regret intensity.
Doesn’t show The paper argues against a 2005 proposal by Neal Roese and Amy Summerville, that regret is intensified by perceived future opportunity, so what regrets track is still argued over. The abstract does not give sample sizes and does not separate regrets of inaction from regrets of action.
Try it: two regrets side by side
Pick one regret about something you did and one about something you did not do. Write a few lines about each. Keep the notes somewhere only you can open.
- The regret about something I did, and how long ago it was
- The regret about something I did not do, and how long ago it was
- How each feels now when I think of it: hot, wistful, heavy or another feeling
- What I picture the unlived path giving me, in as much detail as I can write
The first two lines set the two regrets on the same footing, the way the 1994 studies compared them across time. The third line sorts them by the feelings the 1998 studies described. The fourth shows how much of the imagined path is detail and how much is a hope, and in 2018 studies by Shai Davidai and Thomas Gilovich, regrets tied to hopes were more likely to stay unresolved.
What is regret of inaction?
Regret about something a person did not do, set against regret of action, which is about something done. Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Husted Medvec reported the pattern in 1994. People's biggest regrets tended to be things they had failed to do. Actions caused more pain in the short term, and inactions were regretted more in the long run.
Is it better to regret doing or not doing?
The research does not rank them. Regrets of action tended to sting more at first and to bring hot feelings such as anger. Regrets of inaction tended to last longer, and brought wistfulness in some cases and despair in others. None of the studies on this page compares how choices turned out, so they do not show that acting is the safer choice.
Why do I regret not doing more?
The research on regret offers several possibilities. In six studies, Shai Davidai and Thomas Gilovich found that enduring regrets came more often from the gap to the self a person hoped to be than to the self they felt they ought to be. They found evidence that this is partly because people are quicker to take steps to cope with falling short of a duty than with falling short of a hope. Beike and colleagues found regret was strongest for outcomes that could no longer be changed. Neither shows what regret about not doing more means in a particular life.
What do people regret most?
In a meta-analysis of 11 studies that ranked regrets, by Neal Roese and Amy Summerville, the top six were education, career, romance, parenting, the self and leisure, in that order. In a national telephone survey, regrets more often focused on romance than on other domains. Those studies ask about a regret the person chooses to report.
Does regret of inaction mean the choice was wrong?
The studies measure how regrets are felt, not whether the choice was wise. Hindsight can make a chance look clearer than it was, and the page on hindsight bias describes that. A regret of inaction shows that something is still weighing on a person, which is a different thing from showing what the choice should have been.
Where the idea comes from
The idea comes from Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Husted Medvec, who reported in 1994 that people's biggest regrets tend to involve things they have failed to do. That ran against earlier work on counterfactual thinking, which found that people regret unfortunate outcomes that come from actions taken more than identical outcomes that come from actions foregone.
They reconciled the two with a time course: actions cause more pain in the short term, and inactions are regretted more in the long run. In 1995 they published a review that sets out the processes they think are responsible.
In 1998 Gilovich and Medvec ran three studies with Daniel Kahneman, who had argued that long-term regrets of inaction are mostly wistful, and found common ground: some inaction regrets are wistful and others bring despair.
The question it adds
When a regret about something not done keeps returning, this idea asks which kind it is and what it is attached to.
Is this regret about a chance I can still picture clearly, or about a hope I held about who I would become?
Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Husted Medvec, 1994 and 1995; Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Husted Medvec and Daniel Kahneman, 1998
Questions to carry
- Is this regret about something I did or something I never did, and how long have I carried it?
- When I think of what I didn't do, what do I picture it giving me?
Situations where it comes up
Related
How this page was made. Built with Conscious Living AI and led by Andrew Fayad. How the library is made · Report an issue · Last changed November 14, 2026.