Emotional Responses to an Action Regret: Validation of a Four-Factor Scale

Abstract

Regret is a complex, negative, self-conscious emotion, comprising of both an affective and cognitive component. Regret has been associated with the experience of negative emotions including shame, guilt, and self-punishment which may elicit distress, and result in poor mental health. Self-forgiveness has been proposed as an effective intervention to reduce those distressing emotions. Action regrets, which arise from one's act of commission, are the focus of this study. The study evaluated the validity of a novel 34-item self-report questionnaire measuring the emotional responses to an action regret across four factors: shame, moral judgement, self-punishment, and repair. N= 200 adults participated in an online survey, recalling details of their regret, and completed five self-report questionnaires. Correlational analyses revealed good to excellent construct validity of three factors, while repair was acceptable. Multiple regressions revealed that shame and self-punishment reliably predicted distress scores, while moral-judgement and repair, predicted self-forgiveness scores. The lower reliability of ERAR-repair and implications toward multicollinearity are discussed. The findings support the understanding that negative self-evaluations can lead to distress and self-punishing behaviour. Conversely, a moral and cognitive evaluation of one's behaviour may alleviate distress and encourage the restorative process of self-forgiveness. Keywords: regret, action-regret, shame, guilt, self-punishment, self-forgiveness, moral emotions