The Right Choice

Ms. Zawistowska is going to die. It will be by suicide.

Many will argue that her boyfriend was responsible. The truth is that her devastating past relentlessly haunted her.

It’s a tragic story of difficult choices and painful consequences.

Making hard choices is emotionally taxing. No one likes to do it. The more (potentially) impactful the decision, the more draining it is on our psyche.

Research suggests that people have much stronger emotional reactions (including regret) to an outcome that follows from some action we took versus the same outcome resulting from inaction.

In other words, if we want the outcome to be A but it turns out to be B, we will feel very differently about the result depending upon how we got there.

Blackjack players were studied to determine how much joy and pain they felt from various decisions they made during the course of gambling.

In every round, a player needs to make a decision to either Hit or Stand (unless the dealer drew a Blackjack). In the research experiments, half of the time players were posed the question “Do you want to Hit?” The other times they were asked, “Do you want to Stand?”

The question shouldn’t make a difference. Professional blackjack players already know whether they are going to hit or stand. The dealer asking any question is irrelevant.

But it turns out not to be true.

Players who answered “Yes” to either question (Do you want to Stand? Do you want a Hit?) and then subsequently lost experienced far more regret than those who answered “No” to either question and still lost.

That is insane.

Let’s play this out. Player A is planning to stand. The dealer asks, “Do you want a Hit?” Player A says “No” and then ends up losing the round — which, in retrospect, they would have won had they taken the hit. Player A feels some sense of regret, but not a lot.

Now, same exact setup. Player A planning to stand. Dealer asks, “Do you want a…

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