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OPINION: NEUROSCIENCE – COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING

by | May 1, 2023 | Articles, Neuroscience, Opinion

As our knowledge of the brain’s functions increases, we can redesign our mindsets and environments, says Amy Brann in her final column in the series. This issue: How we should really engage with Regret

 

‘Don’t worry about it!’ ‘It wasn’t really your fault!’ ‘None of us are perfect!’

They all sound like perfectly reasonable reassurances you might offer to a friend. Sitting with our pain, our hurt – our regret can be hard.

When was the last time you gave thanks for your regrets? It’s probably not a regular on your to-do list. In fact, it’s much more normal to feel bad about the things we regret and to try and forget about them. However, science helps us understand why this isn’t the wisest move.

Thanks for regrets?
As humans, we have the ability to mentally time travel through our thoughts, relive our past and project ourselves into our future. But this mental time travel also allows us to perform what’s called ‘counterfactual thought’: the process of asking
and thinking about the ‘what if’ or ‘if only’ in life.

“What would have happened if we had said yes rather than no?”

“If only we had made a different choice, where might we be now?”

We can spend hours dwelling on such thoughts. They can eat away at us, dent our confidence. But they can also help us learn, grow stronger and become better equipped to make wise decisions. And, at the heart of counterfactual thinking lies regret.

 

Regretful inaction
Regret has two faces. On the one hand, you can have an aversion to it. An anticipated emotional fear which stops you in your tracks. Where the ‘do nothing’ option seems the best route.

But when you look at what is happening in the brain during these moments of stasis, you realise your brain is playing a ‘go safe’ trick on you. Science has shown that the brain makes you feel MORE regret when you made a bad choice that resulted from you changing something, compared to if you had just chosen to play it safe, take no action and stick with the status quo.

So we could be thankful for this side of our regrets; they keep us safe. But staying with the status quo all the time isn’t necessarily the best option and it means missing out on opportunities that require us to go beyond the norm. We might be slightly less thankful when that opportunity passes us by. So what’s the other face of regret?

A strategy for change
Well, regret can also be a motivator.

A feeling that reminds you of your past mistakes and makes sure that you don’t make THAT bad choice again.

In this sense, the desire to avoid regret can help you adapt as a person, change your strategy and approach to life and work, and earn from your mistakes. It can enable you to become an even better version of yourself.

This is the side of regret we should be cultivating and giving thanks for. It’s also why we shouldn’t brush our regrets under the carpet. Coaches must hold the space to process these emotions.

By moving on too quickly we miss out on a valuable element of our counterfactual thinking that can be a strategy for positive self-improvement.

Time to think
However, the amount of time we can give ourselves for counterfactual thinking – the essential daydreaming that engages our brain’s default network – is becoming endangered. It is being replaced by a continual stream of task deadlines, meetings and social media engagements that instead rely on our brain’s task-orientated ‘central-executive’ network.

Giving ourselves time in the day to properly consider the ‘what if’ and ‘if only’ not only allows us to dream about what could be but also to learn and flexibly adapt from what was.

Need for closure
Of course, we use more than just feelings of regret to guide our future decision strategies.

The brain is continually tipping the balance between the need for uncertainty and the need for stability; between deciding whether to exploit the current or explore the novel.

The brain has reward systems which motivate us to seek out the unpredictable, offset by built-in biases that cause us to prefer the familiar and hold on to the status quo.

The decision strategies and everyday choices people make in your organisation may depend in part on their brain’s neural balance between this motivation for uncertainty versus stability.

Take, for example, the ‘need for closure’. This is a trait exhibited by some which defines their preference for order, predictability, their intolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty and how closed-minded they are. At a neural level it can be tracked in their brain in terms of the way they respond to, and make decisions about, different experiences they come across.

 

Moulding the brain
Although we can’t always screen for these kinds of built-in brain biases and behavioural traits when hiring new employees, they can be shifted via the process of coaching and training.

This allows you to mould your employee’s brains to better cope with the uncertainties and risks of business, to see regret as a useful strategy for change rather than a call for inaction, and to equip them with the emotional strength, curiosity and open-mindedness to deal with decision-making challenges they will face daily.

Exercises for clients

  • List 3 regrets you have had in your life – big or small. Write down how each made you feel and whether or not it changed the way you did something next time. Were you paralysed by the fear or did you use it as a motivator to do something different next time?
  • Schedule 15 minutes of counterfactual thinking or mental time travel. Giving yourself time to think about past events and regrets means you won’t miss out on opportunities to learn from past mistakes.

Remember: regret and associated emotions can help you remember you want to do things differently. You can be grateful for the lessons – and also regret the decision at the time.