Internal locus of control and individuals' regret for normal vs. abnormal decisions

Regret is an important emotion in the context of decision-making and has many implications for individuals. Most of the previous research focused on contexts in which regret is more likely, while fewer studies examined for whom bad decisions are more likely to elicit regret. In this article, we examine the effect of one such individual difference – the locus of control – on regret following bad decisions that are either congruent (normal) or incongruent (abnormal) with perceived norms. Across three experiments, all employing different contexts, procedures, types of decisions, sampling frames, and moderator operationalization, we find that people regret more the negative outcomes of decisions that are incongruent (abnormal) than the negative outcomes of decisions that are congruent (normal) to the norms, and this effect is only observed among people high on internal locus of control. Individuals low on internal locus of control tend to regret equally decisions that are congruent (normal) and incongruent (abnormal) with existing norms. Further, the data reveals that this moderated effect is mediated by perceptions of personal responsibility for the decision.