The poem “Maud Muller” by John Greenleaf Whittier aptly ends with the line, “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’” What if you had gone for the risky investment that you later found out made someone else rich, or if you had had the guts to ask that certain someone to marry you? Certainly, we’ve all had instances in our lives where hindsight makes us regret not sticking our neck out a bit more.

But new research suggests that when we are older these kinds of ‘if only!’ thoughts about the choices we made may not be so good for our mental health. One of the most important determinants of our emotional well being in our golden years might be whether we learn to stop worrying about what might have been.

 In a new paper published in Science, researchers from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany, report evidence from two experiments which suggest that one key to aging well might involve learning to let go of regrets about missed opportunities. Stafanie Brassen and her colleagues looked at how healthy young participants (mean age: 25.4 years), healthy older participants (65.8 years), and older participants who had developed depression for the first time later in life (65.6 years) dealt with regret, and found that the young and older depressed patients seemed to hold on to regrets about missed opportunities while the healthy older participants seemed to let them go.

To measure regret over missed opportunities, the researchers adapted an established risk taking task into a clever game in which the participants looked at eight wooden boxes lined up in a row on a computer screen and could choose to reveal the contents of the boxes one at a time, from left to right. Seven of the boxes had gold in them, which the participants would earn if they chose to open them. One box, however, had a devil in it. What happens if they open the box with the devil in it? They lose that round and any gold they earned so far with it.

Importantly, the participants could choose to cash out early and keep any gold they earned up to that point. Doing this would reveal the location of the devil and coincidently all of the gold they missed out on. Sometimes this wouldn’t be a big deal, because the devil would be in the next box. No harm, no foul.  But sometimes the devil might be several boxes away. In this case, you might have missed out on a lot of potential earnings, and this had the potential to induce feelings of regret.

In their first experiment, Brassen and colleagues had all of the participants play this ‘devil game’ during a functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) brain scan.  They wanted to test whether young participants, older depressed, and healthy older participants responded differently to missed opportunities during the game, and whether these differences might also be reflected in activity in one area of the brain called the ventral striatum (an area known to very active when we experience regret) and another area of the brain called the anterior cingulate (an area known to be active when controlling our emotions). 

Brassen and her colleagues found that for healthy older participants, the area of the brain which is usually active during the experience of regret, the ventral striatum, was much less active during rounds of the game where they missed out on a lot of money, suggesting that the healthily aging brains were not processing regret in the same way the young and depressed older brains were. Also, when they looked at the emotion controlling center of the brain, the anterior cingulate, the researchers found that this area was much more active in the healthy older participants than the other two groups. Interestingly, Brassen and her colleagues found that the bigger the missed opportunity, the greater the activity in this area for healthy older participants, which suggests that their brains were actively mitigating their experience of regret.

14 Comments

1. 1. cbung 09:33 AM 6/12/12

   "A fool will lose tomorrow reaching back for yesterday"
   You can learn from your mistakes or not. I may not be a lucky bastard but I do have a good memory. Perhaps the anterior cingulate just tells use to look beyond our loses.

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2. 2. dadster 02:32 PM 6/12/12

   When you become older or after you retire develop faith in an energy which some people happen to call by the generic name " GOD" . His function is to take on all the blames and faults and shift them on to HIS shoulders ( anthropomorphically speaking ) so that you get rid of your regrets. By the time you retire , you have done everything in your powers to overcome difficulties , problems and challenges that has been your lot or choice to come across or had selected . The residual challenges,problems or difficulties could be safely deposited with this agent called " God " by some. HE will deal with them the best way at any rate,better than your tired and retired self. And , you can RELAX. If you object to the term " god " or that term evokes unpleasant feelings in you , never mind , then you could imagine that it is some dormant energy which was residing within you which you had not used till now since you had your own
   more powerful energy with you. Now you have used that all up , you are drawing on this dormant energy reserve to take care. Consider that energy as a RELAXATION energy or as a relaxant pill. Yes, of course whenever you call upon that energy you can always drink a glass of water along with it like you do when you take a pill . Try it . The brain has much more adaptability than any other physical faculty of yours. The brain can accept the concept of this "relaxation energy" faster than you think.

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3. 3. Leroy in reply to dadster 03:56 PM 6/12/12

   Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. : )

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4. 4. Cramer in reply to dadster 05:54 PM 6/12/12

   What I take from this article is that some people learn how to better analyze risks and returns in life (either knowingly through logic or unknowingly through their gut reactions/intuitions (or both)). Some people are better able to understand what is out of their own control (chance). Others -- who do not learn this -- tend to blame their own decisions for things that happen completely out of their control.
   
   Example: if only I would have left on-time, I wouldn't have been hit by that bolt of lightning. That very well would be true, but some of us learn to desensitize ourselves (knowingly or unknowingly) to agonizing over things of complete chance. This is where the anterior cingulate comes into the picture. A bit of "que sera, sera."
   
   Dadster, are you saying you believe most healthy people (as defined in this article) do not learn about risks in life, they simply believe that they have become desensitize to negative stimuli because God or some other pseudoscience energy such as healing crystals have removed that emotion? I.e. gave them "power" to overcome?
   
   I think most people, whether or not they believe in God or healing crystals, give more credit to themselves than what your theory suggests. When young, people believe they are more in control of their fate. When old, people believe they are more wise from their years.

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5. 5. generalgruff in reply to N a g n o s t i c 07:25 PM 6/12/12

   Have there been any studies done on why, in an age of unrivalled access to information, so many people remain shockingly ignorant?

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6. 6. rjvg50 01:43 PM 6/13/12

   I use my understanding of the multi-verse to eliminate regret. At each decision point; paper or plastic,grilled or fried, sweetened or unsweetened, I realize that two versions of me split off into parallel universes and that some version of me gets to have it both ways. This ends my illusion of free will and adds millions of imaginary dollars to this universe's bank balance.

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7. 7. jebron 06:21 PM 6/13/12

   As Spinoza teaches, there is a certain eternal necessity to everything which has happened. Understanding that makes it easy to put the past behind. Opiates also help.

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8. 8. HubertB 08:22 PM 6/13/12

   How accurate does a game played for a few minutes really distinguish between what makes some old people better adjusted than others? Maybe all it does is identify the individuals who do not display the attitude, "This game is the stupidest waste of time ever devised by man."

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9. 9. Raghuvanshi1 12:41 AM 6/14/12

   Those who have habit of self-introspection they can find out their destiny.All our life dominated by our unconscious mind.Our conscious mind dance on tune of our unconscious mind.We have no free will. What we do in our life that fix up by our destiny.Those who understand fully this process they never regrets of their past deed or mistake.What may happened in their life that one was destinated by their fate.You choose your carrier, your partner, your family life all are decided by our unconscious mind.Those who know this they not only accepted their fate but love it wholeheartedly

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10. 10. PacRim Jim 03:27 AM 6/14/12

    What might have been?
    In fact, those who achieve most are more likely to regret not having achieved more.
    Also, any change to one's life, any different decision, might have led to its early termination.
    Be grateful that you won the universal lottery by experiencing sentient life.
    Like Popeye, you are who you are. It's that simple.

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11. 11. KRAYA2 01:33 PM 6/16/12

    I'd bet $$$ the same personality that holds on to regrets also holds grudges and blames others for many of their problems.

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12. 12. Barugna in reply to dadster 12:57 PM 6/17/12

    One could generalize from your recipe, while also including several other methodologies, to the larger observation that repeated "cognitive practice" of objectifying (conceptualizing, reifying, idealizing, concretizing, etc) a behavior and disposing of it (dealing with it, reframing it, relabeling it, etc) makes the emotive brain areas less reactive to it, overrides the default network of negative ruminations typical of depression and anxiety, and 'heals'. I think there are many ways to do it; the most important aspect of the practice being that the person learns to use that technique over and over again. With neuroplasticity it seems that practice makes perfect.

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13. 13. sapbucket in reply to dadster 11:06 AM 6/19/12

    This makes good sense. At first I thought you were talking about a religious belief, but then I realized that you are actually talking about the capabilities of the mind to cope with regret. The mind is amazing, and exhibits remarkable plasticity. Summarizing what you said succinctly, "Take the weight of the world off your shoulders," I would how many ways there are to do this? I know one way. Somehow cultists can brainwash their cult in to releasing regret. They can do this very effectively.

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14. 14. Raghuvanshi1 11:57 AM 6/26/12

    If person have habit to self -introspection he can easily find out his destiny and love it.He will never regret of past mistake or losing opportunity.He can find out correct answer why that opportunity was missed by him. He can find out each and every incident of his life `s causes why they happened and why they were unsuccessful or successful.If he continue habit of self -introspection up to end of his life he will be more happy and more wise day by day and lost moment his life he can satisfy that he lived life most joyfully.

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