Which of these is not typically measured in an effort to assess subjective well-being?

It has been suggested that people direct their own lives (Brandtstädter, 1984) by setting personal goals and striving towards their attainment (Nurmi, 1993; Winell, 1987). It has also been proposed that goal attainment is an important criterion for successful life-span development (Marsiske, Lang, Baltes, & Baltes, 1995) and consequently for subjective well-being (see e.g., Little, 1989). However, not all goals are attained and some goal attainments may have unintended consequences. These aspects of goal-directed action have recently been conceptualized as life regrets (Lecci, Okun, & Karoly, 1994) or other related concepts (Heckhausen & Kuhl, 1985; Klinger, 1975, Klinger, 1987; Martin & Tesser, 1989). The research in the field has typically focused on the relation between regrets or unattained goals, and well-being (Kuhl & Helle, 1986; Lecci et al., 1994; McIntosh, Harlow, & Martin, 1995). It might also be assumed, however, that the kinds of regrets, and the ways in which people appraise them, vary from one life stage to another. Similarly, the associations between regrets, their appraisals and well-being may change as people grow older. However, no research has been carried out on age differences in regret-related appraisals. In addition, research related to regret appraisals and subjective well-being in which people are asked to name their regrets in their own words is scarce. Consequently, this study focused on examining age differences in regret appraisals, and the ways in which regret appraisals are associated with individuals’ subjective well-being.

Brandtstädter and Renner (1990, p. 59) suggested that one way ”to achieve consistency between actual and intended courses of personal development” is to set developmental goals and strive for their attainment. In other words, a gap between actual and desired developmental states is an important motivator across the life course. Nurmi (1993) conceptualized this self-direction as a three-stage process. First, people set themselves personal goals to direct their own development. Next, they try to achieve their goals through various plans and actions, and third, they evaluate how successful they have been in realizing those goals. This evaluation will arouse either positive or negative emotions depending on to the extent to which their goal attainments match with desired states (Carver & Scheier, 1990). In the case of unattained goals this process and its consequences has been described in terms of an incentive disengagement cycle (Klinger, 1975, Klinger, 1987) and rumination (Martin & Tesser, 1989): an unattained goal first generates frustration, then an increased effort to attain it, leading finally, if it continues to be unattained without disengagement, to increased depressive symptoms (Klinger, 1987).

In this theoretical framework the term regret refers to the fact that some goal attainment or its consequences have not been achieved as intended. A regret may reflect an unattained goal which is cited as one reason why one’s actual life course has not converged with the intended one in some important respect. For example, if one is not satisfied with one’s occupational career, one may have regrets related to one’s past educational goals and investments, because education is a relevant resource in working life. In addition, a regret may reflect a striving or aspiration which has had unintended consequences for other life domains (Emmons & King, 1988). For example, one may have lavished one’s limited time resources on work at the expense of family life. In general, regret may be defined as a “a more or less painful cognitive and emotional state of feeling sorry for misfortunes, limitations, losses, transgressions, shortcomings, or mistakes.” (Landman, 1993, p. 36).

It has been suggested that the regulation of discrepancies between actual and intended personal development differs from one period of life to another (Brandtstädter & Renner, 1990). For instance, younger adults might be assumed to employ more proactive regulation than older age groups: they may actively strive for a congruence between actual and intended developmental states by acting in accordance with their intentions and goals. In such cases, a person deploys assimilative coping (Brandtstädter & Renner, 1990) or primary control (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995). In turn, older adults might be assumed to deploy more reactive developmental regulation, which is characterized by a reconstruction and adjustment of personal aspirations and goals to fit in with the current life context. Concepts like accommodative coping (Brandtstädter & Renner, 1990) or secondary control (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995) have been used to refer to this process. In this study, I assumed that age differences in regret appraisals may reflect such age-related differences in functional developmental regulation. More specifically, as people grow older, regret appraisals were expected to reflect a shift from proactive to reactive developmental regulation (Brandtstädter & Renner, 1990; Heckhausen, 1997).

It has been assumed that individuals’ possibilities to direct their development in a proactive manner decreases with age, because of limited resources (e.g., health) and contextual opportunities (e.g., remarriage; Brandtstädter & Wentura, 1995). Older adults have also been found to be aware of their reduced possibilities to change their life-course (Heckhausen, 1997). Because older adults feel that they have more limited resources and opportunities in their present developmental context compared to younger adults, this may lead to their appraising their regret-related goals or events as less likely to change. Consequently, my first aim was to investigate to what extent there are age differences in the appraisals of regrets concerning unattained goals or events in terms of changeableness, importance-disappointment, control and consequences.

It is possible, however, that age differences in regret appraisals reflect regret contents, i.e., the life domains the regrets refer to, and variations in these across age groups. The few existing studies on age differences in personal goals, concerns and possible selves have shown that individuals’ goals, concerns and possible selves differ with age (Cross & Markus, 1991; Nurmi, 1992) and that goals reflect the developmental tasks of a particular age period (Nurmi, 1992). For example, younger adults have been shown to typically name education and family-related goals, with older adults’ goals typically relating to children and health (Nurmi, 1992). In turn, younger adults have been shown to typically report concerns related to themselves and relationships, whereas older adults had occupation- and health-related concerns (Nurmi, 1992). In this study, I also included measurements of regret contents to control for their impacts on the age differences in regret appraisals.

Previous research has shown that frequent regrets or unfulfilled goals are associated with a low level of subjective well-being. For example, unfulfilled goals have been shown to be associated with depression (Kuhl & Helle, 1986; Lecci et al., 1994), with aversive ruminative thinking (McIntosh & Martin, 1992) and low level of life satisfaction (Lecci et al., 1994). However, it has also been found that it is not only unattained goals per se but also how they are appraised that has consequences for one’s well-being (Lecci et al., 1994; McIntosh et al., 1995). For example, Lecci et al. (1994) found that the more individuals reported investment in the unattained goal and the more they felt disappointment concerning it, the more depressive symptoms they showed.

Because only few studies have focused on the relations between appraisals of regrets and subjective well-being (see, Lecci et al., 1994) and no studies have examined these associations across the life-span, the last aim of this study was to examine how the ways in which people appraise their regrets is associated with their subjective well-being, and whether these associations vary according to age. Furthermore, because it has been shown that the appraisals of current goals are associated with well-being (e.g., Little, 1989), personal goals were also measured in order to statistically control their effect on subjective well-being (Lecci et al., 1994). In addition, because the association between regrets and well-being may be spurious due to personality dimensions (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1980), negative affect was also controlled for.

Participants

One hundred and seventy six (92 women and 84 men) participants aged between 19 and 82 (M=42.6;SD=19.5) participated in the study. All the participants were recruited in the Helsinki and Vantaa City region in Finland. The sample consisted of three main groups: (1) students (n=68) at the institute of technology (n=32; 10 women, 22 men) or at the institute of health care (n=36; 30 women, 6 men), (2) people in working life (n=59), either employed by the City of Helsinki (n=27 participants; 21

Frequencies and contents of regrets

The results showed that the participants most frequently mentioned regrets that were related to education (30%), work (16%), family (10%), and relationships (9%) (see Table 1). In order to examine how regret contents would differ according to age, I calculated correlation analyses between age and the different regret contents. The results showed that age was associated negatively with regrets related to relationships (r=−.27,p<.001) and leisure (r=−.35,p<.001) but positively with regrets

Discussion

It has been assumed that the ways in which individuals regulate the discrepancies between actual and intended personal development may differ from one period of life to another (Brandtstädter & Renner, 1990). Consequently, it might be expected that regrets, which reflect individuals’ concerns about the ways in which their developmental paths have not proceeded as they intended, would differ according to a person’s age. The results of the present study showed that the kinds of regrets

Conclusion

Employing a temporal focus on the past, present or future is of importance in personality psychology (e.g., Pervin, 1990). For example, it has been shown that individuals’ beliefs related to the attainment of current and future-oriented goals contribute to subjective well-being (review, Little, 1989). The results of this study suggest that it is not only individuals’ evaluations of their future goals but also their appraisals of the past in terms of regrets over unattained goals and events play

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