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IS IT rational to regret? In an uncertain world, choice implies the
possibility of regret.

But good decisions can have bad outcomes and vice versa—being unlucky
is not the same as making a mistake. Lying in hospital awaiting surgery for a
self-inflicted injury, I couldn’t blame my luck, but I could regret my
mistake.

For a year, the escalator at my local underground train station was out of
action. So every day, fearing a train might just be arriving, I ran three steps
at a time, down the long spiral staircase. Of course, I was as likely to just
miss one whether I ran or strolled. But I couldn’t walk while anxiously
anticipating the regret I would feel if I got to the platform as a train
departed. By running I had at least done my best.

I would have gained much more time if I had run to the station and then
walked down the stairs—but I didn’t think about trains until I got to the
station. Eventually my knee gave way under the strain. After that, I could only
hobble.

Anticipating regret is not an uncommon basis for dubious decisions. Imagine
you are caring for a baby but must run some errands in a car. Rather than leave
the baby alone at home for an hour, most people would take it with them.
Although the baby is almost certainly safer at home than in a car, most people
realise they would feel far worse if something happened to the baby if they left
it alone than if they took it with them. The law reinforces these feelings: you
could be prosecuted for leaving a baby unattended.

Psychologists Ilana Ritov at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Jonathan
Baron at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia discovered a human
response that looks highly topical in Britain now.

They told people to imagine that their child had a 10 in 10,000 chance of
dying during a flu epidemic. A vaccine would prevent flu, but the vaccine could
kill some children. When they were asked the maximum death rate for flu
vaccination they would tolerate in order to vaccinate their child, most people
answered well below 9 per 10,000—the average was 5 per 10,000.

Why did they prefer the higher risk associated with leaving their child
unvaccinated? Some said that, though they would be responsible for death caused
by failure to vaccinate, they would feel more responsible for death caused by
the vaccine.

A similar bias underlies decisions made in regulating new products.
Regulatory agencies worry far more about the risk of approving drugs with
harmful side effects than about missing the opportunities they offer for risk
reduction. For them, another thalidomide is unthinkable. But setting safety
standards too high means missing opportunities for saving lives by delaying the
introduction of new products. The demands of people with HIV for untested drugs
illustrate the point. Waiting for the results of trials sounds sensible, but to
err on the side of caution is to err nonetheless.

A life without regret may be no life at all, but making decisions on the
basis of anticipated regrets can skew your choices and damage your knee.