Running head: ANTICIPATING AND AVOIDING REGRET

Anticipating and Avoiding Regret
as a Model of Adolescent Decision-Making
Eric Amsel, Troy Bowden, Jennifer Cottrell, & James Sullivan
Weber State University
Department of Psychology
Weber State University
1202 University Circle
Ogden, UT 84408-1202

The data presented in this paper were based on senior undergraduate theses completed by the junior authors and supervised by the senior author.  A tremendous amount of gratitude goes to Bill McVaugh who read and critiqued all the research by sitting on each student’s proposal and thesis defense committees. Our appreciation also goes to the students and teachers of the 4th and 5th grades of Hillcrest (Mr. Thompson, principle) and Gramarcy (Mr. Drainy, Principle) elementary schools and administrators of the Ogden City School System (Cathy Ortega, Assistant Superintendent).  Finally thanks to my family,   Judi Amsel for all her help, David Amsel, who offered valuable insights into the thinking and culture of the preteens, and Daniel for comic relief! 

Anticipating and Avoiding Regret  as a Model of Adolescent Decision-Making
	Adolescence is certainly a time of contrast, conflict, and contradiction. This also applies to theoretical characterizations of adolescent cognition.  On the one hand, adolescence has been described as a time when cognitive abilities underlying rationality are acquired.  The cognitive abilities acquired during adolescence are the elements of hypothetico-deduction (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958) – the foundation of scientific thought itself (Baithwaite, 1958).  Such cognitive abilities include logical reasoning (Moshman & Franks, 1986; Amsel, Cragun, Chase, Gilmore, Morris, & Trionfi, in preparation), hypothetical reasoning (Amsel & Smalley, 2000; Fay & Klahr, 1996), and empirical reasoning (Amsel & Brock, 1996; Kuhn, Amsel, & O’Loughlin, 1988; Kuhn, Garcia-Mila, Zohar, & Anderson, 1995). On the other hand, adolescence is also described as a time of engaging  in risky behavior, with none other than G. Stanley Hall himself (cited by Arnett, 1999) characterizing it as “normal” for adolescent boys to engage in a period of semi-criminality. Adolescents engage in many forms of risky behaviors more frequently than children or adults (Arnett, 1992; Byrnes, Miller, & Schafer, 1999;  Irwin, 1993). These ill-considered actions run the gamut from thrill seeking and recklessness to rebelliousness and antisocial behaviors (Gullone, Moore, Moss, & Boyd, 2000). 
	Like a bad case of cognitive dissonance, the contrasting characterizations of adolescents as  thoughtful and impulsive, deliberative and impetuous, or reflective and foolhardy are difficult to hold simultaneously. It comes then as no surprise that these conflicting characterizations are not often presented together.  There are book-length treatises that focus exclusively on adolescents’ remarkable cognitive achievements (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958; Moshman, 1999) or risky behaviors (Bell & Bell, 1993) without fully acknowledging the other characterization.  Authors sometimes place these characterizations in different chapters of textbook treatments of adolescence. For example, in Santrock’s (2002) textbook, adolescents are characterized as irrationally assessing their invulnerability to harm in the Biology and Health chapter but as hypothetical and logical scientific thinkers in the Cognitive chapter. 
	These contrasting characterizations of adolescent cognition have played out in interesting ways in the domain of decision making (Jacobs & Ganzel, 1993; Klaczynski, Byrnes & Jacobs, 2001).  On the one hand, the growth of cognitive competencies would suggest that decision-making skills increase from childhood to adolescence (Lewis, 1981).  As an acknowledgment of adolescents’ cognitive sophistication, it has been argued that adolescents are no less capable than adults to make adequate decisions (Quadrel, Fischoff, & Davis, 1993); at the very least, no evidence exists for presumed differences between adolescents and adults (Furby & Beyth-Marom, 1992).  On the other hand, adolescents’ risky behaviors can be traced back to their cognitions (Gerrard, Gibbons, Benthin, & Hessling, 1996) with a number of researchers suggesting that adolescents lack adults’ decision-making competence (Baron, 1990) or self-regulatory skills (Byrnes, 1998), which leads them to make ill-considered decisions (Arnett, 1999; Miller & Byrnes, 1997). Whatever their underlying competence, adolescents’ decision-making performance may be affected by their limited amount of practice and experience (Santrock, 2001), alternative perceptions/preferences (Gardner, 1993; Moore & Galone, 1996) and a host of other mediating and/or moderating factors (Byrnes, 1998) including social contextual (Arnett & Balle-Jensen, 1993; Lightfoot, 1997), psycho-social (Steinberg & Cauffman, 1996), and affective/motivational (Caffrey & Schneider, 2000) variables. Thus, there is a conflicting picture of adolescents as fundamentally competent decision-makers, incompetent decision-makers, or as decision-makers whose performance is affected by a range of moderating and mediating factors.  
	For the most part, the conflicting accounts of adolescent decision making share one thing in common:  Normative claims regarding adolescent decision-making sophistication and vulnerabilities are based on the standard economic decision-making model, typically described under the rubric of Expected Utility (EU) theory (Hastie & Dawes 2001; Landman, 1993).  EU models (including many extensions and variants) propose that good decisions involve comparing options in terms of  the likelihood and value or utility of outcomes associated with each option. Competent decision-making processes, as defined from 
this perspective (Beyth-Marom, Fischoff, Quadrel, & Furby, 1991;  Beyth- Marom, Austin, Fischhoff, Palmgren, & Jacobs-Quadrel, 1993;  Furby & Beyth-Marom; 1992), include  (a) listing relevant options, (b) envisioning possible outcomes or consequences associated with each option, (c) assessing the likelihood of each outcome or consequence, (d) establishing the relative value or utility of each outcome or consequence, and (e) using rules to integrate or combine the likelihood and value information to specify the best option, which is the one that maximizes expected value.
	EU theory and the cognitive processes it implies are often appealed to explicitly or implicitly when defining such concepts as “decision-making competence”,  “decision-making incompetence” and even “moderating” or “mediating” variables.  The tendency to competently engage in the processes described above when making decisions constitutes decision-making competence and failure to competently engage in such processes constitutes decision-making incompetence.  Finally, mediating and moderating variables are those such as cognitive biases, personality traits, or emotions which influence, interfere, sidetrack or undermine  the processes of decision-making described above.
	In this chapter we challenge some characteristics of the EU theory of decision-making in general and its implications for adolescent decision-making in particular. We do not deny that there are normative standards which apply to decision-making practices (c.f., Stanovich, 1999); rather we question whether the Standard Economic Decision-Making model in the form typically applied to adolescent decision making is complete.  We outline  an extension of EU models which treats decision-makers’ anticipation of their post-decisional regret regarding option outcomes as normatively justified in the decision-making process itself  (c.f., Landman, 1993; Zeelenberg, 1999b).  We argue that “regret-based” decision-making is a normatively justified and descriptively adequate model of decision-making. On the basis of this analysis, we present some preliminary research in which describe the development of adolescents’ spontaneous and induced use of anticipated post-decisional regret in decision-making.  Ultimately, we paint a different picture of adolescent decision-making strengths and vulnerabilities than those derived 
from the Standard Economic Decision-Making model.
	These arguments and data are presented in two sections. In the first section, we review and analyze regret-based decision-making models, arguing in favor of the central tenet, that it is rational for decision-makers to actively anticipate and seek to avoid options that are associated with outcomes they would regret if those outcomes were to occur (Landman, 1993). Part of our normative argument in this section is the review of evidence demonstrating that adults’ decisions in a variety of decision-making contexts are influenced by their anticipation and avoidance of regret.  In the second section, we extend the analysis of regret-based decision-making models to adolescents. We outline and present preliminary tests of the claim that adolescents may still be learning to coordinate the component skills required to spontaneously make rational decisions that anticipate and avoid regret.  It is argued that their lack of coordination of component skills for anticipating and avoiding regret make adolescents particularly vulnerable to make decisions which appear in particular contexts to be irrational, impulsive, ill-considered, or risky. 
I. Regret-Based Decision-Making
	Imagine you and other students in your class are each given a free lottery ticket and asked to write your name on it. You are all told that only the students in your class will be given lottery tickets and the lucky holder of the winning ticket will win $17. Upon writing your name on the ticket and answering some questions about your chances of winning, you are asked to exchange your ticket for another.  To (literally) sweeten the offer, you are additionally offered an expensive-looking chocolate as an incentive to exchange.  Do you agree to the exchange?  
	This seems like a fairly simple decision from the perspective of standard economic models of decision-making. The probability of winning the lottery is the same no matter which ticket  you are holding. That is, your chance of winning the lottery is unaffected by whether you are holding your original ticket (because you rejected the offer to exchange), or a new ticket (because you accepted the exchange offer). As the decision graph in Figure 1 makes clear,  the outcomes associated with exchanging tickets (Option A) are each more valued than the corresponding outcomes associated with not exchanging tickets (Option B).  The value of holding a winning ticket is greater if you exchanged the ticket than if you held onto your original ticket because of the added value of the incentive.  Similarly, the incentive increases the value of  holding a losing ticket if you exchanged the ticket than if you kept your original one. In popular parlance, the choice is a “no brainer.”
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Insert Figure 1 here
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	I. 1 Regret Avoidance in Lottery Ticket Exchanges
	Despite the obvious superiority of the option to exchange tickets, only a minority of Israeli college students accepted the offer to exchange, with a total of 59%  of the students resisting it (Bar-Hillel & Neter, 1996, Study 1).  In a series of follow-up analyses and studies, Bar-Hillel & Neter (1996) replicated the finding, ruling out a variety of explanations for the behavior of the lottery ticket exchange “ Resisters.”  For example, most lottery ticket “Exchangers” and “Resisters” said that their original lottery ticket was no more or less likely to win the lottery compared to other tickets, suggesting that participants did not misunderstand or miscalculate the probability of individual tickets winning. Although many students resisted exchanging lottery tickets when offered an incentive, there was no such resistance for exchanging pencils or the color of the paper on which the lottery ticket was printed (but only if the number on the ticket remained the same), suggesting that there was no general hesitation about agreeing to exchanges with or without incentives.  Furthermore, the students resisted exchanging their lottery ticket irrespective of whether or not they wrote their names on their original ticket, suggesting that no simple endowment effect was operating.  While the size of the incentive influenced exchange rates (more exchangers when the incentive is more valued), the framing of the problem did not.  Exchange rates remained stable whether the gamble was framed as a choice between two equal gambling options with an incentive for exchanging or as a choice between unequal gambles (lottery prize or lottery prize plus bonus) with a free option to exchange. 
	Although Bar-Hillel and Neter (1996) suggest that “Resisters” may be “irrational” they do acknowledge that resistance has a function: It protects one from post-decisional regret.  Regret is the negative feeling resulting from counterfactual thoughts regarding how a negative outcome, which actually occurred, would have been avoided had an alternative action or choice been made (Roese, 1994; Zeelenberg, 1999b). Regret is a cognitive emotion in the sense that it involves a comparison of reality to mentally created possible alternatives.  It is also a frequently expressed (Shirmanoff, 1984) and unique emotion, distinguishable from disappointment (Zeelenberg, Van Dijk, Manstead, & van der Plight, 1998) , guilt (Boydston, Goodliffe, Hoag, Money, & Amsel, 2002), and a host of other negative emotions (Roseman, Weist, & Swartz, 1994).  It is usually characterized by punishing oneself for inappropriate actions or poor decisions (i.e., kicking oneself),  feeling that one should have known better,  wanting to undo the negative outcome, and wishing for a second chance.
	Bar-Hillel and Neter (1996) suggest that to protect themselves from post-decisional regret,  the resisters anticipated potential sources of regret and made lottery exchange decisions which avoid such sources. In the context of decision-making,  post-decisional feelings of regret can be anticipated regarding various decision options by imagining how, in the post-decision world, a given possible outcome associated with an option could have been better had an alternative choice been made. With regard to lottery ticket exchanges, a compelling source of anticipated regret is the emotionally painful experience of discovering  that you held the winning ticket but gave it away to someone else in exchange for the small incentive.  One would certainly feel regret about giving away a winning ticket because regret is more strongly associated with narrowly missed positive outcomes (such as just missing a airplane flight by five minutes) than with greatly missed ones (such as missing the flight by 30 minutes) (Kahneman, & Tversky, 1982).  So resisting the lottery ticket exchange insures protection from ever feeling like kicking oneself because a winning ticket was given away.
	Bar-Hillel and Neter (1996) note that resisters gave indications that they made decisions seeking to avoid regret. Some justified their resistance by a desire to avoid outcomes about which they would have post-decisional  regret. The finding that individuals’ gambles are influenced by the potential for experiencing regret in the post-decisional world has been demonstrated in a series of studies by Ritov (1996).  She found that when information about the foregone (i.e., unchosen alternative) gamble was unavailable (because only the results of the chosen gamble were revealed), there was a strong tendency for participants to be risk-averse by choosing a low-risk gamble with a higher probability of winning but a lower payoff. The alternative was a high-risk gamble (i.e., one with a lower probability of winning but a higher payoff).  The preference for low-risk gambles was reversed, however, when information was made available about both gambles, which raised the possibility of discovering that you could have had a big payoff. 
	The results support the notion that anticipating post-decisional regret in a gambling context influences the kind of gamble which will be made.  However, the gambling contexts seem largely unnatural.  To extend the notion in more real-world decision-making contexts, Richard, Van Der Plight, and De Vries (1996), examined the role of anticipated regret in sexual risk-taking behavior. In the study, participants were told to focus on their feelings about having unsafe sex, or their feelings after having unsafe sex. Then participants were then presented with a list of positive and negative affect terms and asked to choose ten to describe their state of mind. The participants in the “feelings after” condition 
scored significantly higher on negative affect scales than those in the “feelings about” condition and were more likely to choose regret (58% compared to 33%) as a description of their feelings. Most importantly though, the authors found in a second study that respondents who were induced to think about their feelings after unsafe sex were more likely to have modified their behavior (e.g., condom use) toward safer sex in the five months that followed than the respondents told to merely focus on their feelings about unsafe sex (Richard et al., 1996).  
	The Richard et al. (1996) finding of regret-based decision-making inducing less risky behavior is consistent with Caffrey and Schneider’s (2000, also see Richard,  De Vries, & Van Der Plight, 1998) study of affective motivation of risky behavior in adolescence. Caffrey and Schneider’s found that the avoidance of regret was more strongly cited as a primary affective motivator for not engaging in a wide range of risky behavior by a group of teens who never or infrequently engaged in risky behavior compared to a group who frequently or regularly engaged in it.  Although adolescents who do not engage in risky behavior may say they are motivated to avoid regret, this may not necessarily reflect a regret-avoidance decision-making process.  But coupled with the previous research presented in this section, the Caffrey & Schneider study suggests that regret-based decision-making can function in some decision-making contexts to decrease the tendency to engage in risky behavior.
	I.2 Regret-Aversion vs. Risk-Aversion in Decision-Making Contexts  
	Regret-based decision-making, it seems, is powerful enough to modify the future behavior of people who are induced to consider their post-decisional feelings.  Paradoxically, Richard et al. (1996) found that regret-based decision-making functions to decrease the tendency to engage in risky behavior and Ritov (1996)  found that regret-based decision-making functions to increase the tendency to engage in “risky” gambles.  The notion here is that assessing a gamble or behavior in terms of its risk is different than its potential for regret.  The upshot is that individuals facing decisions may be risk-averse, appropriately perceiving and avoiding risk, or regret-averse, appropriately anticipating and avoiding outcome options that one would regret.  
	Zeelenberg et al. (1996) tested for the difference between being risk- and regret-averse by allowing participants to choose either risky or safe gambles when the outcome of one or the other of those gambles could be known. Expected Utility theory supposes that gambles could be predicted simply on the basis of maximizing benefits or utility, although some people may prefer riskier gambles (a low probability but high payoff gamble) and others safer ones  (a high probability but low payoff gamble).  However, it was proposed  that gambling preferences can be altered by the availability of feedback which provided information regarding the outcome of gambles. In the task, participants could choose either a safe or risky gamble and then discover the outcome of their gamble. Prior to their gamble, they were additionally told that no matter what gamble they chose, they would additionally discover the consequences of one gamble or the other. For example, in one condition, participants were told that they were going to receive information about the results of the safe gamble.  A tendency to select the risky gamble in such a condition sets up the possibility of discovering in the post-decisional world that choosing the risky gamble was a mistake because only the safe gamble paid off. The only way to avoid any potential regret is to choose the gamble whose outcome will be revealed anyway. For the most part, the information condition participants were in predicted their gamble. Participants chose risky gambles when feedback about risky gambles was going to be received anyway, presumably in order to avoid the regret in discovering that the safe gamble that they did not choose would have won. Similarly, participants chose safe gambles when they were going to receive feedback about them in order to avoid the regret in discovering that the risky gamble that they did not choose would have won. In this study then, choices avoiding regret were made irrespective of their riskiness. 
	The finding that regret-aversion is a decision-making strategy which is distinct from risk-aversion has been confirmed a variety of other studies.  Zeelenberg and Beattie (1997) found similar results with regard to regret- and risk-avoidance in a task involving investment decisions rather than gambling 
paradigms, giving the results more applicability to the real world. 
	I.3 Are There Two Types of Regret to Avoid?
	A regret-avoidance decision-making strategy would seem to involve a context in which the decision maker knows that foregone (unchosen) options could be resolved and will be known. Indeed, a number of studies cited above demonstrate the power of regret-based decision-making strategies by varying participants’ knowledge that the foregone option outcome will be available post-decisionally (Ritov, 1996; Zeelenberg, et al., 1996;  for a complete review, see Zeelenberg, 1999a). 
	Bar-Hillel and Neter (1996) also varied the availability of the foregone option in their study of lottery ticket exchanges. In some conditions, students were told that their exchanged ticket would be recycled and offered to someone else in the room. This procedure adds a particularly strong source of regret as participants must wrestle with the possibility that they will discover someone else has won with their exchanged ticket. However, in other conditions, students were told that they could exchange their lottery tickets and their original ticket would be destroyed. This procedure removes the possibility of regret associated with discovering that someone else won with your original lottery ticket. Surprisingly, the ticket exchange rates were unaffected by varying whether or not potentially regretful information was available. The participants’ general reluctance to exchange tickets remained high even in the face of a monetary incentive to exchange, irrespective of whether the original ticket was to be recirculated (and potentially become a winning ticket for someone else) or thrown out (and not potentially become a winning ticket).  In addition, the authors found that regret was self-reported at the same rate in the resolution and no resolution conditions, suggesting that the availability of resolution  information may have played no role in the decision to resist exchanging lottery tickets.  
	The notion that one may anticipate regret even when it is impossible to resolve the status of the unchosen or foregone alternative is important because it widens the types of decisions in which regret-based decision-making strategies can be applied.  For example, it is impossible to resolve outcomes 
associated with foregone alternative jobs, marriage partners or “risky behavior” because they never get “played out”.  We label as anticipated “concrete” regret decision-making contexts ones which involve anticipating the actual post-decisional discovery of a more valued outcome of a foregone alternative. Anticipating the regret about actually discovering that someone else won a lottery with your original ticket is an example of a “concrete” regret which one can avoid by making the decision to resist exchanging lottery tickets. However, decision-makers may still anticipate and avoid regret in a decision-making context in which it is impossible to ever know the resolution of the forgone alternative. In such contexts, a decision maker can imagine a scenario of being tormented by thoughts in the post-decisional world  that maybe the actual outcome would have been better if only the foregone alternative had been chosen.  For example, one could imagine thinking that if one were to exchange one’s ticket and lose the lottery, one would be haunted later by thoughts that one would have won with one’s original ticket. We label this “anticipated hypothetical regret” as it involves anticipating post-decisional rumination about a potentially more valued outcome of a foregone alternative that can never be verified.  Such regret could be avoided by simply by deciding to choose what was envisioned as the foregone alternative.
	In a series of studies (Sullivan and Amsel, 2001), we replicated and extended Bar-Hillel and Neter’s finding of participants’ use of  regret-based decision-making strategies in the hypothetical regret condition.  In Study 1, 42 college students were interviewed individually and asked to draw a lottery ticket for a $5.00 gift certificate.  After writing their name on the ticket, they were asked to select another ticket from the same container. Participants were then told that they could enter the lottery with their original ticket or exchange it for the new ticket and enter the lottery with it. Students were additionally randomly assigned to a condition in which they were offered no incentive, a small incentive ($.05) or a large incentive ($.25) for exchanging their original ticket. They were told that the ticket they rejected would be destroyed which should have neutralized the concrete source of anticipated regret justifying resistance to the exchange: that of discovering that someone else won the lottery with your original ticket. Finally, after they made their exchange decision, participants were asked whether the ticket they placed into the container was less likely, more likely, or equally likely to win as other tickets in the container.
	Only 4 students (equally distributed among Resisters and Exchangers) incorrectly judged their chosen ticket as more likely to win than other tickets, with everyone else acknowledging that all tickets were equally likely to win. All students resisted exchanging tickets when given no incentive and a majority of them (53%) resisted exchanging tickets even when given an incentive (Fischer Exact Probability, p<.05),  with no difference found between a small and large incentive. The tendency of students to resist exchanging lottery tickets even when offered an incentive to do so and minimizing concrete sources of anticipated regret replicates Bar-Hillel & Neter (1996).  The finding suggests the possibility of a hypothetical source of anticipated regret in lottery ticket exchanges. Bar-Hillel & Neter (1996, p. 20) characterized such a strategy in the following way, “ Our participants seemed willing to entertain the tenuous counterfactual: ‘If only I had not exchanged my ticket, maybe it would have won’ and even that vague possibility affected their decision”.  
	The claim that participants anticipate hypothetical regret was further tested in Study 2, which was designed to lower participants’ resistance to exchange lottery tickets. We speculated that “resisters” anticipated having post-decisional regrets because of having rich and elaborated representations of their original ticket which.  Such representations would be available post-decisionally and, when activated, not only remind them of the poor decision they made when exchanging tickets and but also raise the possibility that they could have won had they kept their original ticket. To lessen participants’ resistence to lottery ticket exchanges when offered an incentive, we minimized their sense of ownership over the original ticket by limiting both the amount of time they owned the original ticket and their engagement with it. 
	Thirty-seven college students from an Introductory Psychology class were interviewed individually and asked to draw two lottery tickets, one at a time, from a container.  Rather then writing their names on the original ticket (as was done in Study 1), participants were merely asked to choose between their first and second drawn ticket to enter into the lottery.  Students were offered either no or a 25¢ incentive to choose the second drawn ticket and told that the ticket not chosen would be returned to the set of active tickets, thereby reinstating the concrete source of regret in the present decision-making context. The chosen ticket was recorded by the experimenter after the Probability Question was posed. Finally, the students rated on a 10-point scale (labeled from “not at all” to “a lot”) how much they thought about the exchange before deciding to do what they did and how sad they would feel if the rejected ticket won.
	Again, few students (n=2) judged their chosen ticket not equal to other tickets in its likelihood to win.  As in Study 1, a majority of students (81%) resisted the ticket exchange in the no incentive condition, but now only a minority of students (31%) resisted in the 25¢ incentive condition (Fisher exact p< .01, see Table 1).  There were more Exchangers in Study 2 than Study 1 when combining the no and 25¢ incentive conditions, Fisher exact p<.05 (Table 1).  Finally, Exchangers tended to think more than did Resisters about the exchange, one-tail t(35)=1.95, p<05, but to feel no sadder if the rejected ticket were to win, t(35)=.60, ns (Table 1).
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Insert Table 1 here
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	Study 2 showed college students having the same tendency to be Resisters in the absence of a cash incentive as in Study 1 and to be Exchangers when offered an incentive.  However, a majority of college students exchanged tickets for 25¢ compared to the tendency for exchanging in Study 1.  We propose that the procedure in Study 2 lessened participants’ sense of ownership regarding the original ticket in Study 2 compared to Study 1, leading to less anticipation of regret associated with giving up the original ticket. This speculation is supported by the finding that Resisters (predicted to anticipate and seek to avoid regret) reported thinking longer about the exchange request than did Exchangers (predicted neither to anticipate nor seek to avoid regret).  
	Is decision-making affected by two sources of anticipated regret?  It seems so. Anticipated concrete regret involves anticipating the actual post-decisional discovery of a more valued outcome of a foregone than the chosen alternative.  Evidence of the power of such a form of regret on decision-making is well documented in the review above and in Zeelenberg, (1999a). Alternatively, anticipated regret can arise from more hypothetical sources than from discovering the resolution of foregone options in the post-decisional world. Anticipated hypothetical regret involves anticipating post-decisional rumination about an unverifiable but potentially more valued outcome of a foregone alternative. Such regret is sensitive to the decision-maker’s encoding of the foregone alternative and its later anticipated availability in memory. As previously noted, making decisions which avoid anticipated hypothetical regret may well play a role in many real-world decisions where foregone alternatives cannot be resolved by virtue of choices that were made, like deciding whether or not to engage in risky behavior.  Although one cannot resolve the foregone alternative in such cases as deciding to have unprotected sex, one can anticipate a post-decisional world in which one frequently and intensely wishes one hadn’t made that decision. 
	1.4 Rationality of Regret Aversion
	While making decisions anticipating and avoiding concrete or hypothetical regret may be something we do, the question remains whether or not it is a rational thing to do.  In an account of its history, Landman (1993) traces the development of Regret Theory, highlighting how tenets of Expected Utility theory were extended to account for regret as a normative and integral part of the decision-making process. According to Landman (1993), the expected utility of an option (A) is still germane to decision-
making, but there is the additional component of adding or subtracting a value representing the individual’s anticipated regret for not having chosen an alternate option (B).  The value of regret is subtracted from a calculation of the expected utility of a decision option, if the best possible outcome of the alternative decision option has a higher expected utility. For example, whatever the subjective expected utility of going to a movie with friends (instead of studying for an exam) may be, that value is lowered by the value of the regret the decision maker anticipates feeling about deciding not to study for the exam and subsequently performing poorly. Subtracting the value of the anticipated regret represents the decision-maker’s calculation that the EU of going to the movies is lower than the EU of studying and passing the exam.  Alternatively, the value of regret is added to the calculation of the expected utility of a decision outcome, if the best possible outcome of the alternative decision option has a lower utility. In the case of a person considering studying for an exam (instead of going to a movie with friends), whatever the expected utility of studying, that value is increased by the value of the lack of regret (or more aptly, the value of the  elation) that the decision-maker anticipates feeling about doing well on the exam even if it means missing out on some fun by deciding not to go to the movie with her friends. Indeed, adding the value of regret (or elation) represents the decision-maker’s calculation that the EU of studying for the exam is higher than the EU of having some fun going to the movies with friends. 
	Although there is a normative justification of Regret theory, that does not end the discussion of whether or not anticipating and avoiding regret is a decision-making practice that is rational.  The assessment of rationality additionally requires coordinating the psychological models of actual judgments and decision-making and logical or statistical models of normative judgments and decision-making (see Amsel, 1985 and Stanovich, 1999, for a discussion of the relevance of this for psychology). The coordination of normative and the descriptive aspects of regret-base decision making is far from fully adequate.  Zeelenberg (1999a) acknowledges that there is less than perfect support in the decision-making literature for specific tenets of regret theory. However, it is argued that there is abundant evidence for the central tenet of regret theory: that decision-makers treat anticipated post-decisional regret as important in the process of deliberation (Landman, 1993; Mellers, 2000, Zeelenberg, 1999b). The normative basis for accepting the tenet is that anticipating and avoiding regret may be used to maximize both decision utility (i.e., it helps to insure that the decision option chosen is the one most valued) and experience utility (i.e., we feel good about the decision outcome) (Zeelenberg, 1999b).  With regard to experience utility, Regret theory acknowledges the relevance to decision-making of post-decision emotions that go beyond the value of the outcome. For example, two people may win the same gift but not feel the same about them if one discovers she could have had a better gift (which results in regret) and the other discovers that he could have had a worse one (which results in elation) (Amsel & Smalley, 2000).  With regard to decision utility, Regret theory supposes that decision-makers adopt a reference point in their analysis of the utility of a target option as the counterfactual states associated with foregone alternatives.  The two forms of utility do not have to overlap, as in the case of framing effects which maximize experienced utility but not decision utility (Frisch & Jones, 1993; Frisch & Clemens, 1994). 
	The normative adequacy of the central tent of Regret theory is important because it acknowledges a pivotal role of human emotions in the process of rational decision-making (Landman, 1993; Mellers, 2000;  Zeelenberg, 1999b). However, there remain problems standing in the way of the successful coordination between normative and descriptive aspects of regret-based decision-making.  Among those problems is one particularly relevant in the adolescent decision-making literature: The role of the decision-making context. This source of irrationality in anticipating and avoiding regret concerns the extent to which decision-making is influenced by properties of the context, not of the decision options themselves.  For example, whether or not hypothetical anticipatory regret (i.e., anticipating post-decisional rumination about an unverifiable but potentially more valued outcome of a foregone alternative) is anticipated and avoided depends on the extent to which the alternative is well enough encoded to be available post-decisionally. This was suggested by Sullivan and Amsel (2001), who found that when ownership of the first drawn lottery ticket was minimized, there was less anticipated regret (as evidence by more ticket exchangers) than when such ownership was magnified.  	Zeelenberg (1999a) claimed that another condition which may heighten the experience of post-decisional regret is the presence of others in the decision maker’s social or professional world for whom the decision is significant and may even expect the decision maker to chose a particular option.  Besides highlighting possible post-decision regrets, the presence or even just the thoughts of others may force a delay in the decision making process in order to insure that it is done right.  Additionally, Zeelenberg (1999b) notes that the decision-makers’ regret-based strategies may be contextually sensitivity to whether the regret anticipated is their own or others’.  The anticipation of others’ regret of may be strong in contexts where one’s decisions have consequences for others. Decisions made on the basis anticipating the concrete or hypothetical regret of others may have neither decision nor experienced utility as defined above.
	There is little doubt that decision-makers’ sensitivity to the context when anticipating and avoiding regret may be functional and at a times serve to maximize experienced utility.  But, what is less clear is whether contextual influence on the decision making process maximizes decision utility. The anticipated regret avoided by making decisions which do not disappoint others may make one feel better about the decision but does not somehow guarantee a rational decision was made. Such contextual sources for anticipating and avoiding regret seems unrelated, or at least not systematically related to the values of the decision options.  Put differently, the extent to which a decision-makers’ anticipation and avoidance of regret are dependent on properties of the context and not one the decision options, the more difficult it is to defend the decision as rational.  	
	In summary, there is good reason to treat the general decision-making strategy of anticipating and avoiding regret as rational, although there remains some lack of coordination between descriptive practices and normative models of regret-based decision-making.  However, not all uses of the strategy are rational.  It may not be rational to make decisions anticipating future regrets if the regrets anticipated are specifically learned, are inaccurate, or are based on a contextual source.
II Anticipated Regret and Adolescent Decision-Making
	What of the relevance of a regret-based model of decision-making for adolescents?  As suggested above, regret-based decision-making, whether induced or spontaneous, can function in some decision making contexts to decrease adolescents’ tendency to engage in “risky” behavior (Caffrey & Schneider, 2000; Richard et al., 1996; 1998).  In the present section we consider adolescents’ ability to make regret-based decisions.  We present data on adolescents’ tendency to spontaneously use regret-based decision-making strategies and the sources of their difficulties.
	II.1 Do Adolescents Spontaneously Make Regret-Based Decisions?
	To study adolescents’ spontaneous use of regret-based decision-marking strategies, Bowden and Amsel (2002) developed a pencil-and-paper version of the lottery ticket exchange problem and an equivalent non-gambling version of the story. The stories involved a protagonist who had to decide whether or not to trade a lottery ticket (Lottery Story) or an unknown tennis partner (Tennis Story) for another ticket or partner and a cash incentive ($1.00).  The stories are listed in Figure 2.  In each case, participant were to make a judgment on a 7-point scale and to explain their judgment.  
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	Prior to providing  their judgments and justifications, participants were invited to imagine being the protagonist facing the decision. The protagonists (and, by extension, participants) were described as motivated to make a decision they would be satisfied with no matter how the decision turned out. This was meant to motivate participants to respond thoughtfully to the problem (Klaczynski, 2001) and consider strategies which might promote post-decisional satisfaction (experience utility).  Experience utility can be accomplished by either of two rational strategies  which promote decision utility. Decision satisfaction can be rationally realized by adopting a EU-based strategy in which decisions are made by computing expected utilities associated with each option, comparing the options’ expected utility, and choosing the option which maximizes it. Post-decisional satisfaction flows from knowing that the best decision was made at the time. Alternatively, a regret-based strategy could be used in which, factored into the comparison of option values, are those associated with anticipating and avoiding post-decisional regret.  Post-decisional satisfaction flows from knowing that whatever outcome actually occurs at least another outcome, which would have been very strongly regretted, did not.
	Figure 2 presents the Control condition of the study, but there were two additional conditions.  In the Promoting Exchange condition, the following sentence was added at the end of each story, before participants were asked to make and justify their judgment:  “While making the decision, you think about trading tickets (partners) and what you would do with the $1.00".  This condition was designed to draw participants’ attention to the value or utility of exchanging tickets, information which was already contained in the control story.  By merely describing the fleeting thoughts of protagonists, the sentence does not add or subtract information from the decision-making context and so does not alter it in objective ways. This was not the case in Sullivan and Amsel (2001), who altered objective properties of the decision-making context. Of interest here was whether the fleeting thoughts of the protagonist, which makes salient the dominance of exchanging, alter not only participants’ decision judgments but also their decision strategies as measured by their justifications for their judgments    
	In the Promoting Resistance condition, the following sentence was added about the fleeting thoughts of the protagonists: “While making the decision, you think about how you would feel if you were to trade tickets/partners and discover that Sam/ Molly won the lottery/tournament with the ticket/ partner you gave her.” In this case the fleeting thoughts of the protagonists make salient the possibility of an outcome which would be regretted. Again, while this possibility can be inferred in the control condition, of interest was whether by making it salient alters participants’ decision judgments and strategies.     
	A group of 49 fourth and fifth grade students (23 male and 26 female, mean age 11.13 years) year-olds) and 53 college students (30 females and 24 male, Mean age 21.78 years) were randomly assigned to one of three different conditions: Control, Promoting Exchange, or Promoting Resistance. Each group filled out the tasks in during class, with the preteens filling out the task as an initial activity in a class discussion and lecture on decision-making.  The preteens and adults were encouraged to circle their judgment on the 1 (very likely not to exchange) to 7 (very likely to exchange) scale and to fully justify their judgments, even if it means to write down that they did not know why they respond the way that they did (no responses were treated as missing data)
	An analysis of the judgments scaled from 1 to 7 revealed no significant main or interactions effects of the Stories (Lottery vs. Tennis), Conditions (Control, Exchange Promoting, or Resistance Promoting), or Age Group (Preteens vs. Adults).  The overall mean for the Lottery Story was 4.47 and for the Tennis Story it was 4. 42 and each were significantly higher than the value of 4, labeled as decision neutrality (Lottery t (102) =1.99, p<.05, Tennis t (100) =1.99, p<.05).  The finding suggests that there was an overall tendency of both groups to favor resisting the exchange but no systematic effects of subject (Age Group) or contextual (Story, Conditions) factors on judgments 
	One factor which was related to judgments was how they were justified.(see Table 2). Justifications were coded as either Regret-based (i.e., justifications based on anticipating and avoiding potentially negative situations which if realized would be a source of  negative feelings), Comparison-based (i.e., justifications based on determining the option associated with the best outcome as assessed on the basis of comparing the value or benefit and probability of the possible outcomes), and Other (i.e., no justifications or ones based on idiosyncratic, invalid and irrelevant information which go beyond the story and is unrelated to value, probabilities or anticipated feelings associated with possible outcomes). The inter-rater reliability was 87% based on 60 judgments.  In both stories, Regret-based justifications were 
associated with mean judgments of resisting the offer to exchange and Comparison-based justifications were associated with mean judgments of accepting the offer.  In separate Oneway ANOVAs (with post-hoc follow-up analyses), run on each story, the mean judgment of participants who expressed Comparison-based justifications were significantly lower than the mean judgment of those offering regret-based ones, with the latter means no different than the mean judgments of those making Other justifications (Lottery Story, F(2, 96)=5.71, p<.01; Tennis Story, F(2, 96)=8.03, p<.001
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	By virtue of differentially predicting judgments, we think that participants’ justifications described general characteristics of their decision-making strategies. For example, Comparison-based justifications focus on the greater values of potential outcomes associated with certain choices.  These justifications were frequently associated  with the tendency to accept the exchanges. Such a  comparison argument was made clearly by a male college student (A 17), who explained, “ It seems like a win/win situation, either way you come out $1.00 ahead.   The same argument was summarized succulently by a male 10 year-old (P 3), “ No matter what happens, at least I will have the dollar afterward.” 
	Regret-based justifications often meant resisting the offer to exchange in order to avoid anticipated regret. For example, one male fifth grader (P 76) expressed his motivation to make a decision to avoid an unwanted potential outcome, “because if he’d trade [the ticket], Sam might win with it”. This parallels a college student’s (A 30) explanation for her ticket exchange resistance, “I would probably wonder later if the ticket I traded was better than the one I traded for.”   A female freshman (A 68) expressed a related concern about unwanted potential regret when justifying her resistance to trade both tickets and partners.  “I always have bad feelings about trading with friends.  Whenever I do, it turns bad. ... I’d prefer to remain friends than harbor resentment for a decision I’d made.” 
	On some occasions, Other justifications could be treated as descriptions of actual decision making practice as when they referred to information not in the story or to information best described as idiosyncratically, not rationally, relevant.  An example of the former decision is a 5th grade male (P 5) who decided to trade tickets, “because he could buy another ticket.” An example of the latter decision is a 5th grade female (P 34) who resisted exchanging partners because “she had that name first so she didn’t want to trade names.”  On these occasions,  justifications point to the informational (albeit invalid) basis for judgments.  However, in other cases, Other justifications could not be treated as descriptions of actual decision-making practices because they were merely expressions of an inability to decide or to justify a decision.  These cases may be best seen as an intuitive or heuristic decision-making processes which has been described (Klaczynski, 2001, p. 292) as a process in which “the judgment or decision that “comes to mind” (i.e., into working memory) is not the result of conscious efforts to reason through a situation or to retrieve a decision-making strategy. Consequently, the cognitive basis for such judgments is difficult to access and articulate”
	Justifications were fairly consistent over Stories, with 62% of participants responding with the same justification (binomial p <.001, based on p=.33 for agreement) and there were no age, gender, or condition effects in consistent responding. As a result, the justification tokens were summed over stories and subject to a 3 (Justifications) by 3 (Conditions) by 2 (Age Group) mixed-model ANOVA, with repeated measures on the Justifications variable. Beyond the separate main and some two-way interactions effects, there was a marginally significant Justification by Condition by Age Group interaction effect, F(2,97)=2.85, p=.063. Adults consistently used each strategy roughly 1/3 (approximately .67 out of 2) of the time across conditions, whereas the preteens offered Other justifications (M= 1.27) more often than Comparison-based ons (M=.59) and both of those more than Regret-based (M=.02) justification, which varied over condition. This relative relation in the frequency of Preteens’ justifications varied in the Promote Exchange condition, in which Comparison-based justifications (M=.94) were offered as frequently as Other ones (M= .81) and both were made more frequently than Regret-based which was made by no preteen in this condition.
	The adults in the present study adopted regret-based decision-making strategy as often as they adopted any other one, with 39% of the adults offering the justification at least once. Moreover, they deployed such a decision-making strategy consistently over stories and across conditions. In contrast,  the preteens did not spontaneously adopt regret-based decision making strategies, despite the presence of conditions which were designed to promote its use. Indeed, the regret-based decision-making strategy seems to be of limited availability to preteens as there was only one incidence of it.  In contrast to the growth of Regret-based justifications, Comparison-based ones were offered as frequently by Preteens (M=.59) as by Adults (M=.76), t (101)=1.10, ns. The strategy is based on the standard economic decision-making model of calculating and maximizing expected utility, suggesting that according to this standard, preteens were as rational as adults.  The there was a developmental decrease in the frequency of Other-based justifications (Preteen M=1.27, Adult M=.70, t(101)=3.33, p<.001). This parallels Klaczynski (2001) who found a similar developmental decrease of idiosyncratic or atypical decision-making  judgments in the examined age-period.  However, the decrease in idiosyncratic judgments was associated with a developmental increase of normatively correct (i.e., EU based) responses in Klaczynski’s (2001) study, but with a developmental increase in Regret-based responses in the resent study. Perhaps growth of either rational (regret or EU) decision making strategy is associated with a decrease in judgments based on idiosyncratic or an absence of justifications.  As this argument suggests, there were negative partial (controlling for age, gender, and condition) correlations between the tendency to make Regret-base and Other justifications, r =-.40 (98), p<.001, and between Comparison-based and Other justifications, r =-.67 (98), p< .001. 
	The data regarding decision-making judgments and justification presented here is consistent with many of the claims presented earlier regarding decision-making in adolescence. Consistent with those who claim that adolescents are irrational (Baron, 1990) or dysregulated (Byrnes, 1998) decision-makers, there was evidence of notably poor judgments (the average judgments were to resist exchanging) and justifications (Other justifications were frequent) by preteens and the absence of rational ones ( Regret-based justifications were absent). On the other hand, that both age-groups offered Comparison-based justifications equally frequently gives additional credence to those who claim that adolescents are as rational as adults viewed form the norms of the standard economic decision-making model (Beyth-Marom & Furby, 1992; Beyth-Marom et al., 1993, Jacobs-Quadrel, et al., 1993).  
	The only exception to this is the finding of consistency with claims about adolescent decision-making is the limited impact of such contextual factors as story content and salience manipulations on decision-making.  For example, task content has been found to be a powerful moderator of adolescent decision-making (Byrnes, 1998; Finken & Jacobs, 1996; Miller & Byrnes, 1997).   However, that was not the case in the present study;  Story type was found to have no influence on decision judgments or justifications.  The content domains of gambling (lottery) and athletics (tennis), used in the present study, has been shown to affect decision making (Byrnes, 1998).  Perhaps the similar structure of the stories in their focus on interpersonal transactions  (trading or not trading a commodity with a friend) overwhelmed any effect of content domains.  
	Similarly, there are well-documented effects of adults’ decision-making being swayed by contextual manipulations altering the salience of information. For example, Tversky and Kahneman (1981) found that judgments were affected by how information in a decision problem was framed (e.g., whether to use a medication based on information about ones’ chances of survival vs. death). In the 
present study, only preteens but not adults were influenced by contextual variation which made salient various aspect of the decision problem. This finding is even more surprising given evidence of only moderate age-related effects in the impact of mediating variables on decision-making (Byrnes, 1998).  However, The present findings are consistent with Berg (1989) who found that adolescents with less strategic knowledge responded more strongly and inappropriately to contextual changes in everyday problem-solving tasks compared to adolescents with more strategic knowledge. Berg measured students’ knowledge of strategic effectiveness by the concurrence between the students’ and experts (i.e., teachers) ratings of the effectiveness of strategies to solve problems. Knowledge of strategy effectiveness was related to age (17-year-olds  had greater knowledge than 11-year-olds) but knowledge of strategy effectiveness was  negatively related to the extent of strategic changes to alterations in both school- and non-school-related problems  She explained these relations in terms of individuals with little knowledge of strategy effectiveness having a limited basis to determine how to adjust to their problem-solving strategies when faced with contextual changes in a problem.  We do not want to overstate the relation between the studies as the present study has few of the design features of Berg’s. But paralleling her results, the preteens in the present study had limited knowledge of decision-making strategy effectiveness as measured by their tendency not to use strategies that experts in decision-making have identified as more effective in the sense of being valid and functional (Regret-based justifications) and their tendency to use strategies identified as ineffective  (Other justifications).  That is, although preteens used Comparison-based justifications at adult levels, their broader knowledge of decision-making strategy effectiveness was less sophisticated. Such a lack of strategic knowledge may have been the reason that preteens were vulnerable to such context effects in decision making as highlighting the fleeting thoughts of decision-makers. The preteens lacked sufficient knowledge to treat the contextual manipulations as irrelevant.  	
	The present study documents that whereas many adults spontaneously approach decisions seeking to anticipate and avoid regret, preteens do not. Additionally the growth in regret-based decision-making was associated with a decrease in idiosyncratic and unjustified judgments and a tendency to be uninfluenced by contextual factors.  Only future research will confirm these connections as more than mere coincidences, but in each case there are other studies which support the claim of a link.  In both cases, the linkage between the growth of regret-based decision-making and a decrease in poor decision-making and contextual oversensitivity is proposed to be the acquisition of knowledge of strategic effectiveness; that is the appreciation of decision-making strategies as valid and functional. Acquiring strategic understanding is consistent with Byrnes’ (1997) characterization of a self-regulated decision-maker, who has good appreciation of the effectiveness of their decision-making strategies, strategies to deal with moderating variables, and high standards for successful decision-making.  While more research directly testing the claim is needed, it seems that  knowledge of strategic effectiveness can arise by the acquisition of rational decision-making practices based on EU (Klaczynski, 2001) or Regret theory (the present finding). In either case, the availability of more effective and valid (i.e., rational) grounds for decision-making may be the basis for adolescents learning to avoid both overreacting to contextual variation and making idiosyncratic or unjustified decisions.   
	II. 2 The Acquisition and Consolidation of Component skills for Anticipating and Avoiding Regret
	The central point of the chapter has been that regret-based decision-making is an normatively rational basis on which to making decisions and one which is often adopted by people actually making them.  However, preadolescents do not spontaneously approach decisions by anticipating and seeking to avoid regret.  One remaining question is whether 10- and 11-year-old preteens lack the cognitive prerequisite skills for making decisions which anticipate and avoid regret or merely fail to appreciate the strategic value of doing so. Answering that question may clarify the nature of the developmental process underlying the acquisition of regret-based decision-making in adolescence.
 	Cortrell & Amsel (2001) attempted to test for availability of component skills underlying regret-based decision-making among preteens (10 year-old fourth graders) and college students (22-year-old college freshmen) .  We decomposed regret-based decision-making into four component cognitive skills. The four skills identified as necessary for regret-based decision-making include the abilities to a) methodically generate possible both positive and negative possible outcomes associated with each decision option, b) systematically anticipate ones’ own feelings associated with each possibility being realized, c) unbiasedly rank order those outcomes in light of anticipated feelings, and d) decide to avoid the worst possible outcome.  Of course, this does not exhaust the skills involved in regret-based decision-making.  However, our goal was to identify the decision-making skills that are not only necessary but also unique in the process of anticipating and avoiding regret. For example, we did not assess the ability to compute utilities (Schlottman & Anderson, 1994) even though it is a component skill necessary to reason according to Regret theory of decision-making.  However, it is not an component cognitive ability that is unique to regret-based decision making as it is also a characteristic of decision-making according to Expected Utility theory (Beyth-Marom, et al., 1991).
	The four component skills uniquely necessary for regret-based decision-making are assumed to have two properties which are important to note.   First, they are temporally organized in the sense that skill a) (generating positive and negative outcomes) would generally come before b) (anticipating one’s feelings about the potential outcomes).  This does not preclude the possibility of complete or partial iterative processes which involves repeatedly cycling through all or some of the steps.  However, given that one step is taken in a given iteration, the later but not the earlier step in the sequence may also be required.  The second property is that the skills are hierarchically related in that completing one step is necessary for completing  the next step.  Unless one has generated possible positive and negative outcomes, potential emotional reactions to them cannot be anticipated, and if those reactions are not anticipated they cannot be ranked.  
	The temporal and hierarchical nature of the cognitive skills under investigation required separate tests of each skill. Each test was embedded in a questionnaire containing four different stories, one story testing each of four skills. In each story, a protagonist is described as struggling with a decision about relationship between friends within a school context (i.e., working together or alone on a school project; giving critical or complimentary academic feedback to a friend) or a home context (i.e., buying a gift for oneself or a friend, going to a movie with friends or studying).  The stories were constructed to be familiar to preteens and college students.  In each story, decision options were presented as mutually exclusive and participants were asked to advise the protagonist making a decision, by using one of the component decision-making skills (generate possible outcomes, anticipate feelings regarding possible outcomes, rank outcomes, and choosing to avoid most  undesired outcome).  Figure 3 presents an example of one of the stories and each of the tasks.  Interviews with and questionnaires distributed to other participates of comparable ages of participants in the present study allowed us to identify decision options which were considered more culturally appropriate or socially desirable. We labeled the culturally appropriate or desirable option as  “Desired” and the alternative option as the “Undesired” and assumed that a majority of participants in each age group would be biased towards thinking--at least initially--that the Desired option was best.
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 	Questionnaires were distributed and completed in class.  In each questionnaire, the order of presenting decision making tasks was invariant, with Story 1 testing participants’ generation of possible outcomes of decision options. Story 2 involved participants anticipating the feelings about already generated possible outcomes being realized. Story 3 tested participants’ ranking from best to worst of already generated and evaluated possible outcomes. Story 4 assessed participants’ decision to avoid the worst possible outcome given information about already ranked order possible outcomes. The skill tested by a given story was counterbalanced in four different questionnaires resulting in approximately a quarter of the participants being tested for each component with a given story.  We review the nature of the skills tested and the results from each assessment in separate sections below.  
	Generating possible outcomes of decision alternatives.  Participants were asked to generate four possible outcomes associated with the options facing a protagonist (see Figure 3).  We asked specifically for 4 outcomes as we were interested in the range not the number of possible outcomes generated. Methodically generating a range of possible positive and negative outcomes for each option is necessary for a complete assessment of potential regrets. However, since one option has been identified as more culturally appropriate and socially desired, we assumed that positive outcomes associated with the Desired option (and perhaps negative options associated with the Undesired option) would be more available and more frequently generated. That is, the positive consequences of “doing the right thing” and maybe the negative consequences of not doing so are a culturally available and may bias participants’ generation of outcome possibilities .
	Generated outcomes were coded as positive (good) or negative (bad) for the “Desired” and “Undesired” decision option, tallied, and subjected to a 2 (Age Group) by 2 (Outcome) by 2 (Decision Option) mixed-model ANOVA. There was an overall bias in outcome generation in that participants generated many more positive than negative possible outcomes regarding the Desired (Positive M =.93; Negative M  =.37) than Undesired option (Positive M=.58; Negative M=.58), F(1,110)=16.07, p<.001.  This bias was stronger among the Preteens who generated more Positive than Negative possible outcomes about the Desired Outcome than did Adults, with both groups generating Positive and Negative possible outcomes equally frequently regarding the Undesired Option (See Figure 4).  Oneway ANOVA followup analyses revealed that Preteens generated fewer Negative Desired outcomes and Positive Undesired ones. The former result is particularly important as fewer negative outcomes generated  means fewer sources of anticipated regret for that Desired option.
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	Anticipating feelings about outcome possibilities. The second task in the questionnaire  required participants to rate their anticipated feelings regarding four possible outcomes: A Positive and a Negative outcome associated with a Desired and Undesired option (see Figure 3). Systematically anticipating one’s feelings about potential positive and negative outcomes would be important in the rational use of regret-based decision-making (see the previous discussion of experience and decision utility and the role of context in decision making).  That is, to make a rational regret-based decision, it would be necessary to anticipate feeling happy about positive potential outcomes and sad about negative potential outcomes, irrespective of the apparent desirability of the options with which they are associated. But participants may be biased in judging their anticipated emotional reactions by the socio-cultural desirability of the options.  Participants may anticipate feeling happier about positive and less sad about negative possible outcomes that are associated with options that are socio-culturally desired than those which are undesired.  Similarly, they may anticipate feeling less happy about positive and more sad about negative outcomes associated with options that are socio-culturally undesired than those which are desired.
	Participants’ anticipated affective ratings were subjected to a separate (Age Group) by 2 (Outcome) by 2 (Decision Option) mixed-model ANOVA.  As predicated, anticipated affective ratings were more positive for Desired (M=5.03) than Undesired (m=3.62) options, suggesting that the socio-cultural desirability of an option affected participants’ emotional reactions to the potential outcomes.  This is not surprising perhaps, but may be irrational if judgments are made  based on those anticipated emotions. Again this effect was stronger for children, who, compared to adults, anticipated feeling much happier about Desired than Undesired options, F(1,111)=6.20, p<.01 (see Figure 5a), and feeling much less happy about Positive than Negative options F(1,111)=4.09, p<.05 (see Figure 5b). The results suggest that not only do preteens generate fewer negative potential outcomes for Desired options than do adults (as demonstrated in task a), but they also anticipate such potential outcomes to be emotionally less negative than do adults.
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	Rank ordering anticipated feelings about outcome possibilities.  The third task in the questionnaire involved rank-ordering four possible outcomes from the anticipated emotionally best (most positive) to worst (most negative) (see Figure 3). As with the anticipatory affective ratings, anticipatory affective rankings about potential positive and negative outcomes would have to be unbiased for the rational use of regret-based decision-making. Participants’ anticipated affective rankings were subjected to the same 2 by 2 by 2 mixed-model ANOVA that has been used previously.  Again, as with the ratings, affective rankings were higher (more positive) for Desired (M=2.05) than Undesired (M=2.83) options, suggesting bias. Also as before, the bias was stronger for the preteens, whose anticipatory affective rankings were much more positive regarding Desired options (M Preteens=1.82; M Adult=2.26) than Undesired one (M Preteens=3.00; M Adult=2.66) F(1,111)=5.73, p<.05 (see Figure 6).  There was also a three-way interaction (F(1,111)=5.73, p<.05) due to Preteens emotionally ranking Undesired Positive (2.77) and Negative (3.24) outcomes no differently from each other, which was the only pair of outcomes envisioned for Desired or Undesired options that was not differentiated.  Both rankings were higher than neutrality (2.5), suggesting that both anticipated outcomes of Undesired options are ranked by Preteens as emotionally poor. Thus, irrespective of their bias in anticipating outcomes or their feelings about them, preteens are also biased in emotional ranking of anticipated outcomes – they judge as emotionally disagreeable possible outcomes from Undesired options.
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	Deciding to avoid the emotionally worst possible outcome. Finally, participants decided which of the protagonists’ options they thought would be best, defined as one the protagonist would not regret depending on how it turned out (see Figure 3).  Additionally, participants were told that the likelihood of the occurrence of each outcome of a decision option was the same and were given the protagonists’ emotional rankings of Positive and Negative outcomes for Desired and Undesired options.  In 3 of the stories, the Positive outcome envisioned for the Desired option was emotionally ranked by the protagonist as the best possible one, and the Negative outcome for the same option as the worst.  By setting up the ranking in this manner, participants making decisions to avoid the emotionally worst possible outcome,  would choose the Undesired option.  It was assumed that the Undesired option would not be chosen very frequently, except by participants seeking to avoid regret.  To confirm this assumption, the fourth story (given randomly to 1/4 of the sample) was designed differently  than the other three stories.  In the fourth story, the Positive and Negative outcomes envisioned for the Undesired option were emotionally ranked by the protagonist as respectively the best and worst possible ones.  It was predicted that under these conditions, adults and preteens alike would choose the Desired option as the best decision. This prediction was largely confirmed, with 72% (22/32) of the participants choosing the Desired option in this control story. The picture was different in the other three experimental stories, where the Undesired option (the option which would avoid anticipated regret) was selected only 40% of the time (Chi Square (1) = 10.01, p<.001).  Most importantly, there was no difference in the frequency with which preteens (41%) and adults (53%) chose the options which would avoid regret.  Thus, given sufficient information about protagonists’ emotional rankings, an equally sizable percentage of preteens and adults made decisions which anticipated and avoided regret.   
	The patterns of results from the present study suggest that preteens are as competent as adults to make decisions which anticipate and avoid regret, when they have enough decision-making support. A sizable percentage of preteens and adults ignored an option’s undesirability and chose it as the best decision to make when the desired option was associated with the emotionally worst (and best) possible outcome.  However, without the support and left to their own devices, preteens biasedly judged socio-culturally desirable options as ones which would protect them from anticipate regret.  Negative potential outcomes anticipated for Desired options were generated less often and anticipated to be less affectively negative by preteens than adults.  Moreover, preteens ranked outcomes regarding Undesired options as emotionally poor, presumably the type of outcome they would try to avoid when making decisions. It should be noted that many of the biases demonstrated by preteens were also seen in adults, suggesting that the preteens were less sophisticated but not fundamentally different than adults in their abilities to anticipate and avoid regret.
	The findings suggest that preadolescents have the component skills to make adult-like decisions to anticipate and avoid regret. However, they lack adults’ systematicity in coordinating the skills in the service of making rational regret-based decisions.  That is, they have the hypothetical, logical, and theoretical skills to think through a decision rationally (at least as rationally as adults) to avoid post-decisional regret but perhaps lack the metacognitive skills (Moshman, 1999) to do so spontaneously. 
	II.3 Reconceptualizing Adolescent Decision-Making  
	We introduced this chapter by suggesting that an alternative normative decision-making model may help clarify some of the confusing claims being made about adolescents’ ability to make rational decisions.  It was argued that the regret-based decision-making model is best seen as an extension rather than a replacement of the standard economic model subsumed in Expected Utility Theory.  As an extension of EU, Regret theory has many of the same properties, including the computing of probabilities and utilities of outcomes and combining those values.  But beyond allowing decision-makers to envision potential outcomes of options, Regret theory permits them to anticipate their feelings about those envisioned outcomes and use such information to inform the decision-making process itself. There remain issues regarding the normative adequacy of regret theory , but work continues (Zeelenberg, 1999b).  As for its descriptive adequacy, it appears that a regret-based decision-making strategy is often used by adults in contexts where the decision-maker might actually confront information about how regrettable a decision had been. Regret avoidance was found, irrespective of risk avoidance, to be spontaneously adopted by adults (Zeelenberg, et al., 1996) and easily induced in them (Richards et al., 1996), which had the consequence of affecting their behavior.  Moreover, regret avoidance arises in more abstract decision-making contexts in which decision-makers anticipate and avoid regret regarding foregone alternative outcomes which can never be known.   
	In some of the first research presented on the topic, preteens were shown to not spontaneously adopt regret-based decision-making strategies.  However, with decision-making support, as many preteens as adults made decisions avoiding the worst possible emotional outcome even if that outcome was associated with a socio-culturally desired option.  Adolescents’ acquisition of rational decision-making strategies, whether based on Regret or Expected Utility theory, was connected to the growth of metacognitive knowledge of decision-making strategy effectiveness, which is a characteristic of well-regulated decision-makers (Byrnes, 1998).  It was further suggested that development of such metacognitive knowledge may be related to the decrease in idiosyncratic or unjustified decisions and an increase in both appropriate responses to contextual variation and the use of more methodical, systematic and unbiased regret-based decision-making processes (ie.., generating possible outcomes, anticipating feelings about those possible outcomes, and emotionally rank-ordering outcomes).  
	The suggestion that metacognitive decision-making knowledge may be related to more unbiased regret-based decision-making and more appropriate responses to contextual variation is an important one. Other studies have found strong effects of all sorts of context on adolescent decision-making (c.f.,   Byrnes, 1999; Finken, & Jacobs, 1996, Klaczynski,  2001; Miller & Byrnes, 1997, often resulting in less adequate or appropriate decisions being made.   That is, all manners of context effects have been shown to induce biased decision-making in adolescents,  undermining rational processes. For example, the presence of peers is a contextual factor which has been shown to increase adolescents’ tendency for risk taking both on athletic performance tasks and questionnaires assessing health-related risk-taking behaviors (Maggs, Almeida, & Galambos, 1995; Miller & Byrnes, 1997; Wallace & Logan, 2001).  While the influence of the presence of peers on risk taking may depend on the nature of the peer relationship (Jones, 1985), characteristics of the social setting (Finken, 2001), and broader aspects of the social-cultural context (Lightfoot, 1997), it is nonetheless a powerful influence. This is particularly noteworthy as being with peers is a context in which teenagers often find themselves (Larson & Verma, 1999).
	The influence of peers has been explained by their role as models of, audiences for, and competitive partners egging on adolescents’ risk-taking (Miller& Byrnes, 1997).  Each of these options suggest that the presence of peers is associated with an undermining or bypassing of a rational assessment of risk.  But, perhaps there is a fourth influence of peers, that of biasing the rational assessment of regret.  Peers and their (sub)culture create a decision-making context in which certain decision options might be seen as socio-culturally desired.  We have seen that, without decision-making support, preteens biasedly judged socio-culturally desirable options as ones which will protect them from anticipated regret. They just don’t think through the potential negative outcomes regarding desired options and minimize the emotional consequences of those options.  Moreover, preteens also treat the potential outcomes of Undesired options (even positive ones) as emotionally poor and presumably to be avoided.  The presence (and perhaps just the thought) of peers, and the socio-cultural processes introduced by them inadvertently sets into motion biased cognitive processing that almost “rubber stamps” the socio-culturally desired option. Of course, a socio-culturally desired option may change depending on context, with the same decision in different context being analyzed differently.
	While biased, adolescent regret assessment involves many of the cognitive processes identified as being acquired during adolescence and necessary for hypothetico-deductive reasoning, including hypothetical and logical reasoning. As with the case of  hypothetic-deductive reasoning, where children must learn to coordinate component skills in the service of a strategic approach to problem-solving (Amsel & Brock, 1996;  Schauble, 1996), so it is with decision-making. In both cases, inexperience and lack of metacognitive knowledge produce bias leading to poor scientific conclusions and risky decisions.  Support of the process and learning from poor outcomes may debias decision-making processes (Baron, 1993; Byrnes, Miller, & Reynolds, 1999) just as they have shown to debias scientific reasoning (Kuhn et al., 1988, 1995).

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Table 1: Distributions and Judgments of  Resisters and Exchangers
______________________________________________________________________________
Comparison		Condition			Resisters 		    Exchangers
			_________			 ___________________________________
Incentive **	
				No			13				5
				25¢			  6				13
Cross-Study Comparison ** (Only Participants in the No or 25¢ incentive condition) 
				Study 1		14				3
				Study 2		19				18
Ratings (Only Participants in Study 2)
				Think*		4.21 (1.99)			3.11 (1.36)
					(n)		19				18		
				Feel			4.74 (2.13)			4.22 (3.02)	
					(n)		19				18
___________________________________________________________________________________
*p < .05
** p < .01

Table 2: Mean Judgments by Decision-Making Strategy and Story.
______________________________________________________________________________
Story		Strategy			n   		mean		sd
______________________________________________________________________________
Lottery 
		Regret-based			18		5.28 		2.08          	
Comparison-based		42		3.50		2.40          	
	Other				40		4.98 		2.15		
Tennis 
		Regret-based			12		5.33		1.30	
Comparison-based	          	28		3.18 		2.34	          			
Other				59		4.83 		1.90		          		
______________________________________________________________________________

Figure 1: Decision Graph for the Lottery Exchange Decision Problem (see text for details)
___________________________________________________________________________________
Initial State		Decision Option		Potential Outcome (p)	Value 
___________________________________________________________________________________

							Win the Lottery (.0161)	$17 + incentive
			A:  Exchange Ticket
							Lose the Lottery (.984)	$0 + incentive
Original Lottery Ticket		
							Win the Lottery (.016)	$17
			B:  Keep Original Ticket
							Lose the Lottery (.984)	$0
___________________________________________________________________________________
1 Bar-Hillel & Neter (1996, Study 1) has 61 students in the class who participated in the lottery, making the probability of having the winning lottery ticket 1/61.

Figure 2:  Lottery Ticket (LT) and Tennis Player (TP) Stories used in Bowden and Amsel (2002)

	Danny was just given a raffle ticket to win a wonderful new bike.  Sam was also given a ticket.  Sam  wants to trade his ticket for Danny’s ticket. Danny said no, so Sam offers Danny $1.00 to trade tickets. In considering the trade, Danny is aware that all the tickets really have an equal chance of winning. Imagine that you are Danny.  You  want to make a good decision – one that you would not feel so sad about later depending on how the decision turned out. 

How likely is it that you will trade raffle tickets with Sam for $1.00 or resist trading them and not get the $1.00? 

1		2		3		4		5		6		7
Very likely  				  Equally likely				  Very likely to
to trade (and 				    to trade or		                      	               resist trading
get $1.00)		   	              resist trading				     (and not get $1.00)

Explain your choice _____________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

	Sandra was to play an important tennis tournament.  She had to pick the name of a partner from a hat. Molly also played in the tournament and she too picked a partner’s name from a hat.  After drawing names, Molly asked Sandra to trade names for the partner she had picked.  Sandra said no, so Molly offers Sandra $1.00 to trade partners. In considering the trade, Sandra is aware that neither her nor Molly knows any of the names in the hat and all are equally good tennis players.  Imagine that you are Sandra. You  want to make a good decision – one that you would not feel so sad about later depending on how the decision turned out. 

How likely is it that you would trade partners with Molly for $1.00 or resist trading them and not get the $1.00?

1		2		3		4		5		6		7
Very likely  				  Equally likely				  Very likely to
to trade (and 				    to trade or		                      	               resist trading
get $1.00)		   	              resist trading				     (and not get $1.00)

Explain your choice _____________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

Figure 3: Story and Tasks Assessing Regret-based Decision Making (Cortrell & Amsel, 2001)

John, a student, has a very important test in his first class tomorrow, and he wants to get a good grade on it to please himself and his parents. It is the movie’s last night in the theaters and John and his friends have wanted to see it for a long time.  He thinks that he will have a great time if he goes.  John also thinks that by studying tonight he will do very well on the test.  He knows he can’t both go to the movie with friends and study for the exam – he has to decide to do one or the other.    

Generating positive and negative outcomes:  Pretend John is your friend and he has asked you to help him think through the decision he has to make.  He asks you to help him think of possible outcomes associated with the decision he has to make.  He has asked you to come up with four possible outcomes.  Briefly describe these four below.  

Anticipating one’s feeling about possible outcomes:  Please imagine you are John and circle the number corresponding to how it would feel if each of the following four options occurred.

1.  If he studied for the exam, he would get a good grade on his test and most likely his parents will be happy with him.
1		2		3		4		5		6		7
Very		Pretty		A little		Not sad 	A little		Pretty 		Very		
Sad		Sad		sad		or happy	happy		happy		happy

2.  If he went to the movie, he would be unprepared to take his test and most likely his test performance will negatively affect his GPA, disappointing himself and his parents.
1		2		3		4		5		6		7
Very		Pretty		A little		Not sad 	A little	Pretty 		Very		
Sad		Sad		sad		or happy	happy		happy		happy 

3.  If he studied for the exam, he would not see the movie and most likely he will feel left out when his friends talked about it. 
1		2		3		4		5		6		7
Very		Pretty		A little		Not sad 	A little		Pretty 		Very		
Sad		Sad		sad		or happy	happy		happy		happy

4.  If he went to the movie, he would hang out with his friends and most likely they will think he is cool for putting them first and the exam second.
1		2		3		4		5		6		7
Very		Pretty		A little		Not sad 	A little		Pretty 		Very		
Sad		Sad		sad		or happy	happy		happy		happy

Rank ordering outcome options. Please read these possible outcomes below and rank them from 1-4 according to what you think is the BEST or MOST POSITIVE possible outcome in terms of how it would make him feel (ranked as 1) to what you think is the WORST or MOST NEGATIVE possible outcome in terms of how it would make him feel (rank as 4).  Be sure to rank each possible outcome and give each outcome either a 1, 2, 3, or 4.

Rank 		Outcome
_______	If he studied for the exam, he will get a good grade on his test and most                     likely his parents would be happy with him.
_______	If he went to the movie, he will be unprepared to take his test and most likely his test performance will negatively affect his GPA, disappointing himself and his parents
_______	If he studied for the exam, he will not see the movie and most likely he will                           feel left out when his friends talked about it. 
_______	If he went to the movie, he will hang out with his friends and most likely they will think he is cool putting them first and the exam second.

Deciding to avoid the worst possible outcome. John ranked the possible outcomes associated with making one decision or the other.  He ranked them according to what he thought is the BEST or MOST POSITIVE possible outcome in terms of how he would feel (ranked as 1) to what he thought is the WORST or MOST NEGATIVE possible outcome in terms of how it would make him feel (rank as 4). 

	Rank 		Outcome

	1		If he studied for the exam, he will get a good grade on his test and most likely his parents would be happy with him.
2		If he went to the movie, he will hang out with his friends and most likely they will think he is cool putting them first and the exam second.
	3 		If he went to the movie, he will be unprepared to take his test and most likely his test performance will negatively affect his GPA, disappointing himself and his parents.
	4	 	If he studied for the exam, he will not see the movie and most likely he will feel left out when his friends talked about it. 

To John, each decision outcome seemed equally likely to occur.  John wanted to make a good decision – one that he would not deeply regret later depending on how it turned out.  Imagine you are John, and decide which is the best decision he could make.    

John should (circle one):	Study for the exam			
				Go to the movie with friends

Figure 4: Possible Outcomes generated by Age Group, Option

Figure 5a: Mean Emotional Ratings of Options by Age

Figure 5b: Mean Emotional Ratings of Outcomes by Age

Figure 6: Mean Ranking of Outcomes by Age, Option