People predominantly regret inactions rather than actions when looking back on their lives
When looking back on their lives over the long term, people predominantly report greater regret for inactions (errors of omission) than for actions.
The retrieved literature includes direct replications and extensions of foundational psychological research (such as Gilovich and Medvec) showing that while short-term regret favors actions, long-term life reflection consistently reveals that inactions are a source of greater regret. Papers [3] and [9] explicitly support this temporal pattern.
Frederick R. Leach, Jason E. Plaks. Regret for Errors of Commission and Omission in the Distant Term Versus Near Term: The Role of Level of Abstraction. 2009. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167208327001
This study demonstrates that errors of omission (inactions) are regretted more than errors of commission (actions) in the distant past, supporting the temporal pattern of regret.
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Siu Kit Yeung, Gilad Feldman. Revisiting the Temporal Pattern of Regret in Action Versus Inaction: Replication of Gilovich and Medvec (1994) With Extensions Examining Responsibility. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.37122
This replication study confirms the classic finding that people experience stronger regret over inaction compared to action when looking back in the long term.
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