“Why?” or “Why Not?”
An examination of regret.
Last night I was witness to one of those maddening conversations that is just a disagreement over the burden of proof.
“Why not?” said one of my former students.
“Well… ” replied her companion, “Why?”
It got me to think about those two different questions. The people who ask “Why not?” have a bias towards action. The people who ask “Why?” have a bias towards inaction.
Both questions are valid. They simply reflect different preferences about taking risks. In this case, the decision you make will likely depend on the question you ask.
Which question is better?
One way of examining decision quality is to query decision-makers about regret — the feeling that they made the wrong decision. A 1995 paper in Psychological Review (Gilovich & Medvec, v102(2):379–395) studied the experience of regret and found:
Actions, or errors of commission, generate more regret in the short term; but inactions, or errors of omission, produce more regret in the long run.
