This analysis offers another window into the deep structure of regret. Failures to become our ideal selves are failures to pursue opportunities. Failures to become our ought selves are failures to fulfill obligations. All four of the core regrets involve opportunity, obligation, or both.
For example, boldness regrets—If only I’d taken that risk—are entirely about opportunities we didn’t seize.[3] Foundation regrets—If only I’d done the work—are also largely about opportunities （for education, health, financial well-being） that we didn’t pursue. Connection regrets—If only I’d reached out—are a mix. They involve opportunities for friendship we didn’t follow through on, as well as obligations to family members and others that we neglected. Moral regrets—If only I’d done the right thing—are about obligations we didn’t meet.
The result is that opportunity and obligation sit at the center of regret, but opportunity has the more prominent seat. This also helps explain why we’re more likely to regret what we didn’t do than what we did. As Neal Roese and Amy Summerville have written, “Regrets of inaction last longer than regrets of action in part because they reflect greater perceived opportunity.”？[4]
The importance of opportunity became clearer when I reexamined the data I collected in the American Regret Project, the quantitative portion of my research. The size and breadth of this survey allowed me to investigate differences between subgroups. Do women’s regrets differ from men’s? Do Black Americans hold different regrets than White Americans? Do life regrets depend on whether you’re rich or poor?
The short answer is that group differences were not massive. The longer and more intriguing answer is that the differences that did emerge reinforced the centrality of opportunity as a driver of regret.
Take, for example, the education level of respondents. People with college degrees were more likely to have career regrets than people without college degrees. At first that might seem surprising. Having a college degree generally affords people a wider set of professional options. But that could be precisely why college graduates have more career regrets. Their lives presented more opportunities—and therefore a larger universe of foregone opportunities.
Income presented a similar pattern. Regrets about finance, not surprisingly, correlated tightly with household income—the lower the household income, the more likely someone was to have a finance-related regret. But regrets about careers ran in the reverse direction. That is, the higher the income, the more likely it was that someone had a career regret. Again, more opportunities could beget more regrets about unrealized opportunities.
Regrets about education were most prevalent among people who had attended college but had not graduated. For one in four people in this group, education constituted their greatest regret. In this case, impeded opportunity may be the reason.
Thwarted opportunity is the likely reason for the one racial gap that emerged in the survey. Racial differences in regret were minimal—except on a single dimension. People who were not White had more regrets about education than White people, which is likely explained by the racial disparities in access to educational opportunities in the United States.
Age also showed the importance—and paradox—of opportunity. In the American Regret Project survey, twenty-year-olds had equal numbers of action and inaction regrets. But as people grew older, inaction regrets began to dominate. By age fifty, inaction regrets were twice as common as action regrets. Indeed, according to the data, age was by far the strongest predictor of regrets of inaction. When the universe of opportunities before them has dwindled （as it has with older folks）， people seem to regret what they haven’t done.
Inaction regrets increase as people age.
SOURCE: Pink, Daniel, et al., American Regret Project （2021）。
Yet they also look for opportunities in different places. For example, among those ages thirty through sixty-five, regrets about career and finances were most prevalent—likely because, at that stage of life, opportunities were still alive in those realms. But as people aged, they tended to have fewer regrets about education, health, and career—and more regrets about family. One reason: at age seventy, the opportunities are relatively limited to get a PhD or launch a new career or compensate for decades of hard living. Those doors are closing. But the opportunity remains to reconcile with your estranged brother before both of you pass on. That door remains open.
Differences between men and women were not vast, but they were present. For example, men were more likely than women to have career regrets. About one in five men expressed regrets in this category, but only 12 percent of women. By contrast, women were more likely than men to have family regrets—24 percent of women versus 18 percent of men. The survey didn’t ask questions that can deliver a definitive explanation for this difference. But we can speculate that men, on average, may be more likely to value professional opportunities, and women, on average, may be more likely to value relationship opportunities.[*]