Before every big decision the brain rehearses possible regret; left unchecked, that anticipated regret pushes leaders toward delay and default options.
Many senior executives do not fear losses as much as they fear regret: the decision that, if it goes wrong, will be visibly theirs. The short scientific answer is that the brain simulates possible regret before a choice and activates some of the same circuits that become active after a bad choice. This anticipated regret can sharpen a decision and improve its accuracy, but when it becomes too large it pushes a leader toward delay, indecision, and retreat into the default option.
Where Is Regret Constructed in the Deciding Brain?
In a 2004 study published in Science, Camille and colleagues designed a simple gambling task and showed participants the outcome of the option they had not chosen. Healthy subjects reported regret, adjusted their choices to reduce future regret, and learned from the emotional experience. By contrast, patients with damage to the orbitofrontal cortex—the lower frontal region of the brain—neither reported regret nor anticipated the negative consequences of their choices. The implication is clear: regret is not a peripheral feeling; it is part of the decision-making machinery.
Every big move is rehearsed once in the mind as a possible regret before it is made — Photo: Kaboompics / Pexels
Why Does Fear of Regret Strengthen Over Time?
In a 2005 study published in Nature Neuroscience, Coricelli and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants completed the same gambling task. Greater regret was associated with greater activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the hippocampus. A more important finding was that participants became increasingly regret-averse across the experiment, and the same pattern of brain activity reappeared just before they made their next choice. In other words, the brain accumulates experiences of regret and replays them before each new decision.
This is precisely what can happen in the boardroom. A manager who has experienced several costly decisions may, without knowing it, carry the weight of past regrets into every new file. In a 2007 review in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Coricelli, Dolan, and Sirigu noted that the emotional consequences of a choice can create control mechanisms that reinforce the experienced behavior or lead to its avoidance. At the organizational level, that avoidance often shows up as a call to wait or as a request for one more report.
Can Anticipated Regret Be Managed?
In a 2018 meta-analysis, Ellis and colleagues reviewed 37 publications with more than 72,000 participants drawn from health decisions. Interventions that targeted anticipated emotion changed anticipated regret with a small effect size (d = 0.24) and changed behavior with a small effect size (d = 0.29). However, the effects on anticipated regret and intentions were not sustained at follow-up. Because these data come from health decisions rather than financial markets, generalizing them to investment decisions requires [needs further verification]. The broader lesson is that anticipated regret is adjustable, but a single educational session is not enough; the structure of the decision itself must change.
Empty chairs can mark a decision no one wanted to own the regret for — Photo: Leandro Alamino / Pexels
From a psychoanalytic perspective, Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) described the sense of guilt as the tension between a harsh superego and the ego—a superego that punishes even intentions. Anticipated regret in senior executives is often this same inner voice issuing a verdict before an action. A manager who does not recognize this voice may mislabel procrastination as caution.
What Can Executives Do?
Three practical steps follow from this evidence. First, before deciding, write down explicitly which regret is feared: the regret of acting or the regret of not acting; the cost of waiting is also a choice. Second, record the decision criteria before seeing the outcome, so the quality of the decision is not judged later by the luck of the result. Third, divide high-risk decisions into smaller steps with review points, reducing the emotional load of each step. None of these steps removes regret; they move it from master to advisor.
Conclusion: Regret Is a Good Advisor and a Bad Master
Neuroscientific evidence shows that anticipated regret is a natural and useful part of decision making; without it, people do not learn from their mistakes. The danger arises when accumulated regrets condemn every new decision before it can be made. An executive who names the fear, records the criteria before the result, and breaks a large decision into smaller steps can use this same feeling to make braver and more measured decisions.
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Camille N, Coricelli G, Sallet J, Pradat-Diehl P, Duhamel JR, Sirigu A. The involvement of the orbitofrontal cortex in the experience of regret. Science. 2004;304(5674):1167-70. PMID: 15155951. DOI: 10.1126/science.1094550
Coricelli G, Critchley HD, Joffily M, O’Doherty JP, Sirigu A, Dolan RJ. Regret and its avoidance: a neuroimaging study of choice behavior. Nat Neurosci. 2005;8(9):1255-62. PMID: 16116457. DOI: 10.1038/nn1514
Coricelli G, Dolan RJ, Sirigu A. Brain, emotion and decision making: the paradigmatic example of regret. Trends Cogn Sci. 2007;11(6):258-65. PMID: 17475537. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2007.04.003
Ellis EM, Elwyn G, Nelson WL, Scalia P, Kobrin SC, Ferrer RA. Interventions to Engage Affective Forecasting in Health-Related Decision Making: A Meta-Analysis. Ann Behav Med. 2018;52(2):157-174. PMID: 29538630. DOI: 10.1093/abm/kax024
Freud S. Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). In: Strachey J, ed. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 21. London: Hogarth Press.
Image Credits
Featured image: Photo: Dzmitry Held / Pexels — chess: Photo: Kaboompics / Pexels — boardroom: Photo: Leandro Alamino / Pexels.
