Sunny Side Up: How Regret Leads to Defensive Optimism

This paper explores how people regulate pre-outcome regret, which is experienced in situations where a decision is regretted even before its outcome is known. We show that pre-outcome regret leads to defensive optimism about the upcoming outcome and that severity of the decision consequences represents a boundary condition for this distortion.



Citation:

Sandra Laporte and Gita V. Johar (2013) ,"Sunny Side Up: How Regret Leads to Defensive Optimism", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 41, eds. Simona Botti and Aparna Labroo, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: .

Authors

Sandra Laporte, HEC Montreal, Canada
Gita V. Johar, Columbia University, USA



Volume

NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 41 | 2013



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