Impact of Willful Ignorance and Personal Negligence Based Regret Among Elderly

Abstract

Regret, a self-attentive negative emotion, comes from the realization of the inappropriate course of action taken in the past. In general, it appears from an upward comparison involving counterfactual thinking. While it comes from our action that we have performed in the past, which we wish we would not have done, it may also come from our inaction, that is, the things we did not do and we wish we would have done. Regret in itself is a negative feeling and it can also lead to high levels of psychological distress and hamper the subjective wellbeing of individuals. The thoughts and feelings associated with regrets become more worrisome in old age, as people in this age have time to reflect and evaluate their entire life, but can hardly change anything or correct any mistake. Although there are many studies conducted on regret in old age, however, most of them are related to the western context and they overlooked several important aspects of regret. Against this backdrop, the present research examined the regret experiences of Indian older adults. Specifically, the research aims to explore the common sources of life regrets among Indian older adults. The present study also examines the role of gender in the experience of regret. The study further examines what do older adults regret more– their wrong actions or their missed inactions. Another aim of the present thesis is to explore the process of regret. One of the main aims of the present work is to explore the role of willful ignorance and personal negligence in regret experiences. The research also discovers the reasons behind health regrets. Finally, the present study examines the way people cope up with feelings of regret and their learning experiences. For meeting the objectives of the present research, two studies have been conducted– a narrative Inquiry, and a survey Study. ii In the narrative inquiry, interviews of 60 retired participants (Male = 30 & female = 30; Mage = 67.50) were taken which gives 157 incidents of life regrets. These regret incidents included all sorts of regrets and explained the process, nature, as well as coping with regrets. This study also examines the role of willful ignorance and personal negligence in life regrets. Through this study, not only the researcher got the answers to many research questions but it also helped in developing scales concerning willful ignorance, personal negligence, health regret, and regret coping for the survey. Study two, the survey, was conducted on 300 (Male = 150 & female = 150; Mage = 65.79) retired older adults. The focus of this study was clearly to test and confirm the findings of study one on a larger sample and also to address a few research objectives that could not be addressed in the narrative inquiry. This study also explores the role of regret in the subjective well-being of participants. The survey questionnaires included the self-developed scales along with a few well-published scales measuring variables like self-esteem, indecisiveness, general health, social comparison, etc. Results of both the studies suggest that regret in old age comes from a few dominant sources, namely, education, health, career, finance, and parenting. However, sources like friendship, leisure, community, and self, are less frequent sources of regret among older adults. The studies show gender differences in the prevalence of the sources for regret. While for men the biggest sources of regrets are health, education, finance, career, and spirituality, however, for women, the prominent domains are education, career, health, parenting, and family. Results further show that in old age, people regret more about their inactions than their actions. The study shows that the counterfactual thoughts, responsible for regrets, originate from various unfulfilled expectations and comparison processes. Unfulfilled expectations could be due to self, or others, and even come from expectations towards others. On the other iii hand, a comparison that can lead to counterfactual thinking could be a comparison between the anticipated and the real outcomes, or between self and others, or even between pre-and post-decisional lives. Surprisingly, health regret emerged as one of the biggest regrets in this study. Results show that there are three main sources behind health regrets: the absence of health-enhancing behavior, the prevalence of health threatening behavior, and medical negligence at an early stage. Results show that people involve in wilful ignorance primarily because of two reasons– they are motivated to not know or they are not motivated to know something. Personal negligence, on the other hand, could from five various sources– illusion of invulnerability, personal rigidity, easy alternative, hopelessness, and perceived irrelevance. Willful ignorance and personal negligence show significant association with regret feeling, regret involvement, health regret as well as regret coping, however, they do not contribute to overall life regrets. People use several coping strategies to handle their regrets, including both adaptive and maladaptive methods. Participants mentioned using adaptive ways, namely, positive reappraisal, downward comparison, social support, religious/spiritual involvement, and maladaptive strategies, namely, denial or suppression, attributing externally, and justification/rationalization. Regret learning is a step further from regret coping, that is, individuals need to cope-up with their regrets first to turn those regrets into learning lessons. More importantly, it is also found that learning from regret is not limited to self rather it could be for others as well. Results further show that regret experiences significantly contribute to satisfaction with life as well as in general happiness of individuals. Results are discussed in the context of Indian culture. Keywords: Regret; Regret domains; Regret and gender; Old age; Indian older adults; Willful ignorance; Personal negligence; Regret coping; Regret learning.