According to the phenomenon commonly known as action effect and vastly replicated across the judgment and decision-making literature, more regret is associated with decisions resulting from action than inaction. Action vs. inaction, however, might either refer to change vs. no change or doing something vs. not doing something. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of this variation in operationalization of action-inaction on the strength of action effect, for both positive and negative outcomes, across four different domains of employment, finance, education, and health. This was an experimental scenario-based study (N = 215) with four between-subjects conditions varying in outcome valence and the actor’s initial state as either engaged or non-engaged in a particular course of action. Action effect was found to be stronger with respect to the initially engaged than the initially non-engaged decision-maker (ηp2 = .04), indicating that action as change results in a stronger action effect than action as doing something. The effect of the initial state was also moderated by domain. In addition, we both replicated and went beyond prior empirical literature regarding the effect of outcome valence and domain on action effect, with our findings being mostly consistent across joy and regret. Findings are discussed in light of the norm theory and its key concept of normality and contribute to the literature on moderators of action effect.

Investors, like any decision maker, feel regret when they compare the outcome of an investment with what the outcome would have been had they invested differently. We argue and show that this counterfactual comparison process is most likely to take place when the decision maker’s expectations are violated. Across five scenario experiments we found that decision makers were influenced only by forgone investment outcomes when the realized investment fell short of the expected result. However, when their investments exceeded prior expectations, the effect of foregone investment on regret disappeared. In addition, Experiment 4 found that individual differences in the need to maximize further moderated the effects of their expectations, such that maximizers always take into account the forgone investment. The final experiment found that when probed to make counterfactual comparisons, also investments that exceed expectations may lead to regret. Together these experiments reveal insights into the comparative processes leading to decision regret.

People in a depressive state frequently believe that things could have happened differently in their lives, which is regarded as counterfactual thought. This study aimed to investigate whether the styles of counterfactual thought shown by people with indicating signs of depression and by people without any of those signs are different. Study participants were 42 adults divided into two groups: those with signs of depression and those without signs of depression. Five stories taken from newspapers and magazines and fictional scenarios were presented to the participants. After reading such stories, participants had to answer questions about how the narrated facts could have been different from what they actually were. Results indicated similar counterfactual thought styles in both groups (with and without depression signs). Most of the thoughts found were categorized as upward, subtractive, self-referent and that modified an aspect referred to action/inaction. A few significant differences between groups were observed, and most of them were obtained through directed modifications, in the last three stories. Some tendencies were shown in the group of people with signs of depression, such as those found for the subtractive category, t(40) = 2.33, p < .05, which can indicate a trend of possible failure in the preparatory function of CT, and in the hetero-referral function, t(40) = 1.97, p < .05, indicating a difficulty in thinking of different forms of action in the future. The removal of negative events may indicate that these experiences are not beneficial to people’s survival. These results may indicate some tendencies about how people in depressive states think about past events.