The Lure of Counterfactual Curiosity: We are willing to seek information about how much they could have won, even at a cost, and even though it has a negative emotional impact (it leads to regret)

FitzGibbon, Lily, Asuka Komiya, and Kou Murayama. 2019. “The Lure of Counterfactual Curiosity: People Incur a Cost to Experience Regret.” OSF Preprints. September 18. doi:10.31219/osf.io/jm3uc

Abstract: After making a decision, it is sometimes possible to seek information about how things would be if one had acted otherwise. In the current study we investigated the seductive lure of this counterfactual information, namely counterfactual curiosity. We demonstrate in a set of five experiments using an adapted Balloon Analogue Risk Task with varying costs of information, that people are willing to seek information about how much they could have won, even at a cost, and even though it has a negative emotional impact (it leads to regret). We go on to show that despite its lack of utility, people increased their risk-taking after receiving information about large missed opportunities, leading to poorer future outcomes. This suggests that information about counterfactual alternatives has incentive salience properties – people simply cannot help seeking it.