The Effect Of Power On Regret

Power is not only the essential characteristic to calibrate the society and organization relations,but also an important mental status.Past researches have pointed out that power has significant influences on individual's cognition,emotion and behavior.However,Few researchers have proved the relationship between power and different emotions empirically.Regret is a negative feeling which is very common in the individual's daily life and has a huge effect on the decision behavior.The present research aimed to explore the effect of individuals' power on regret by a preparatory study and two experiments.The preparatory study explored the relations between the individuals' common power and regret.The result showed that there was a negative correlation(r=-0.22)between power and regret.Compared with the powerless,the powerful experienced more regret.Experiment 1 manipulated the power by role play,and aimed to explore the effect of power on action regret and inaction regret.The result showed that compared with low-power participants,high-power participants experienced more action regret and less inaction regret.Experiment 2 further manipulated the power by a recall task and adopted another decision situation.Experiment 2 aimed to check the results acquired in experiment 1 and introduc a possible mediating factor-responsibility to explore whether responsibility can mediate the influence of power on regret.The result showed that the powerful participants experienced more action regret,while the powerless participants experienced more inaction regret.The result of experiment 2 also indicated that the responsibility did not mediate the effect of power on regret.Totally,the present research indicated that the influence of power on regret depends on the types of regret,individual with high power experience more action regret and less inaction regret,compared with individuals with low power.