ABSTRACT
Younger people tend to look at regret optimistically as something that will guide them to make better decisions in life, while older people tend to see regret as something sad, depressing, and associated with failure. College students and young graduates most often identify regrets in choosing education and careers. Women tend to have regrets in the context of relationships while men more often point to professional and career choices. Regret is usually considered a feeling after one acts in a manner to a particular context and then later wishes not to have done so, or fails to act when action would have been the better choice. Some descriptions of regret talk about the role of regret in recognizing missed opportunity in the past with the possibility of correcting the past decisions. Other descriptions consider the missed opportunities in the past with the possibility of not missing such opportunities in the future.
