You'll Be Sorry

Negative emotion not only is uncomfortable by definition, but also restricts the range of thought, causing us to become preoccupied with that which is upsetting.  Moreover, the negative emotion exacts a significant stress-inducing toll on our physical and emotional well-being.  No one wants to be anxious or angry.  Nothing good can come from such dysphoric experiences.  Or can it?

The fact is that negative emotions exist because they have provided an evolutionary survival advantage.  For instance, becoming anxious can prompt us to be safety conscious and becoming angry can mobilize us literally to fight for our lives.  When it comes to everyday health too, at least some negative emotion can be salutary.

Let’s consider “regret.”  If we regret having behaved unhealthfully, we might use that experience of negative emotion to deter similar future unhealthful behavior.  Anticipatory regret--imagining regret that would follow an untoward behavior--also can be good for our health.  Noel Brewer, Jessica DeFrank, and Melissa Gilkey (2016) evaluated the available research to more precisely determine the potential benefits.

The investigators found that persons high in anticipatory regret expressed both greater pro-health intentions and pro-health behavior than did those low in the regret.  And anticipatory regret was a more potent predictor than were other negative emotions, such as disappointment.   The nature of the regret also was relevant.  Although both anticipated action regret (imagining regretting doing something unhealthful) and anticipated inaction regret (imagining regretting not doing something healthful) promoted health, when compared with anticipated action regret, anticipated inaction regret was a slightly more powerful promoter of some types of healthful behaviors.  For instance, it might be more effective to imagine regretting that you did not exercise than to imagine regretting that you did watch television all day long.

The last mentioned finding proved a bit surprising to me, since most people intuitively guess that we are more regretful of what we did wrong rather than what we did not do right.  I believe more research should be devoted to the issue.  However, that surprising finding does not minimize the more powerful conclusion.  Anticipated regret—whether of action, inaction, what we did wrong, or what we failed to do right—is a fundamental “negative” human emotion that can have very “positive” effects.

The bottom line is that you should not summarily shrug off your health regrets at the moment you experience them.  Instead, you would do well to pay close attention to and reflect upon those very regrets.  The attention and processing that you do devote to the regrets, however, must be followed by well-conceived corrective strategies that enable you to avoid the unhealthful behaviors that precipitated the instigating regrets in the first place.

Reference

Brewer, N., DeFrank, J., & Gilkey, M. (2016).  Anticipated regret and health behavior: A meta-analysis.  Health Psychology, 35, 11, November, 1264-1275. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hea0000294.