CDC Seminar Series: Dr. Teresa McCormack, School of Psychology, Queen’s University, Belfast - The development of regret in young children

The development of regret in young children
 
 Regret plays an important role in our mental lives and impacts on our decision-making. However, developmental psychologists have only recently begun to conduct research to establish when regret first emerges. I will describe this recent experimental work, which has attempted to pin-point the age at which children first experience regret. I will also discuss our experimental studies that demonstrate that children’s decision-making improves when they start to experience regret, including a description of preliminary evidence that indicates that the ability to experience regret helps children learn to delay gratification. I will finish by discussing our most recent work that has examined the development of regret in the context of prosocial decision-making.