Attachment Anxiety Uniquely Predicts Regret Proneness in Close Relationship Contexts

Abstract

Although regret plays a central role in decision making, few studies have explored the nature of regret in close relationships. The authors hypothesized that anxiously attached individuals, who are hypersensitive to relationship threat and prone to ambivalence in close relationships, would be particularly likely to experience regret over relationship-related decisions. Study 1 examined the relative abilities of attachment anxiety and neuroticism to predict regret proneness. Entered as simultaneous predictors, neuroticism was the only significant predictor of general regret proneness, but attachment anxiety was the only significant predictor of interpersonal regret proneness. In Study 2, participants were randomly assigned to read regrettable relational versus nonrelational scenarios. Once again, neuroticism predicted regret in the nonrelational conditions, whereas attachment anxiety predicted regret in the relational conditions. Not only may these findings help explain anxiously attached individuals’ uncertain relational decision-making patterns, but they also highlight an important distinction between attachment anxiety and neuroticism.