Porcentaje de quienes luego se arrepienten de cada elección. Las barras y el registro completo aparecen abajo.
Estilo de vida
Última revisión 2026-05-13
Calidad de la evidencia 3.63/5
Puntuación de revisión en ocho dimensiones según la
rúbrica de calidad
. Cada dimensión puntuada de 1 a 5.
D1 Verificación de fuentes
4/5
D2 Autoridad e independencia de las fuentes
4/5
D3 Precisión de la tasa de arrepentimiento
2/5
D4 Comparabilidad de las fuentes
2/5
D5 Patrón de Gilovich
5/5
D6 Calidad de la prosa
4/5
D7 Completitud de las advertencias
5/5
D8 Calidad de la muestra
3/5
Media3.63/5
Datos sustitutos — no existe ninguna encuesta directa sobre el arrepentimiento para esta decisión. Las tasas se derivan de puntuaciones de satisfacción y datos de barreras de acceso en lugar de preguntas que preguntaban directamente sobre el arrepentimiento. Ver advertencias más abajo.
Arrepentimiento por acción
Confesar lo que sientes y ser rechazado
25%
~25% se arrepiente de haber confesado sentimientos no correspondidos
Adultos estadounidenses que revelaron sentimientos románticos, varias muestras
variable; los arrepentimientos por acción se desvanecen más rápido que los arrepentimientos por inacción con el tiempo
Arrepentimiento por inacción
Contenerse y no confesarlo nunca
44%
44% de las mujeres (19% de los hombres) reporta arrepentimiento romántico por inacción
Adultos estadounidenses de 19-103 años, estudio Northwestern University/Summerville
retrospectivo de por vida
% que se arrepienten de esta elección
Confesar lo que sientes y ser rechazadoContenerse y no confesarlo nunca
25%44%
inaction dominates — Domina la inacción — la mayoría se arrepiente de no actuar.
Decisiones relacionadas
Decisiones semánticamente similares — mismo terreno, distintos compromisos.
Roese and Summerville’s meta-analysis of nine articles (11 data sets) found that romance is the third-most-cited regret domain, accounting for 14.8% of regrets behind education (32.2%) and career (22.3%), and that across regrets generally, those of action are more intense in the short term while those of inaction persist longer and intensify over time. A separate Northwestern/Kellogg study of 370 adults ages 19 to 103 found that 44% of women reported some romance-related regret (versus 19% of men), with those regrets prominently including someone they had feelings for but never pursued — the canonical “one that got away” — and never entering a particular relationship. There is no direct survey asking people who confessed romantic feelings and were rejected whether they regret the disclosure, so the action-regret rate of roughly 25% is a derived proxy, not a measured figure: it is anchored to the documented temporal pattern in which action regrets fade while inaction regrets endure.
Daniel Pink’s World Regret Survey, which has gathered more than 26,000 regrets from people in 134 countries, found that inaction regrets outnumber action regrets roughly two to one overall — a gap that widens to about three to one by people’s 50s — with connection and romance among the most consistently cited durable regret themes. This ratio is consistent with Gilovich and Medvec’s foundational temporal model, which holds that unexplored counterfactuals — “what if I had said something?” — remain open-ended and available to ruminate over, while action regrets are constrained by actual outcomes that eventually lose their emotional charge. Rejection, even when painful, forecloses the uncertainty; silence does not.
The main caveat is that the inaction-regret rate is anchored to the female rate from a single study conducted before app-mediated dating became dominant. Using the blended male-and-female rate from the same study (approximately 30 to 32%) would narrow the regret delta to around 0.05 to 0.07, still inaction-dominant but less dramatically so. The action-regret rate of 25% is estimated from indirect evidence rather than directly measured by a survey asking people who confessed romantic feelings whether they regret having done so. Both primary academic sources are more than 15 years old, and the emotional costs and norms around disclosure may differ for younger cohorts who navigate rejection through digital mediation. The directional finding that romantic inaction produces more durable regret than romantic action is among the most replicated results in regret research.
Fuentes: acción
Registro de evidencia
Cada número a continuación es lo que reportó cada fuente, con la cita textual en la que nos basamos y cómo llegamos a nuestra cifra. Haz clic en cualquier enlace para verificarlo directamente.
1/1 fuentes verificadas de forma independiente palabra por palabra frente a la fuente citada
[1]Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (NIH/PMC) — What We Regret Most ... and Why
Verificado
↗ 13 other entries
Revisado por pares
Romance ranks #3 among regret domains (14.8% of all regrets); regrets of action are more intense in the short term while regrets of inaction are more intense over the long term
Extracto
“"romance ranked number three (14.8%, SD = 2.34) ... regrets of action are more intense in the short term; regrets of inaction are more intense over the long term ... regrets of inaction persist longer than regrets of action."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2005-09-01
Accedido
2026-05-13
Verificación
Extracto recuperado de forma independiente y confirmado palabra por palabra frente a la fuente citada durante nuestra auditoría de fundamentación.
Cálculo
Roese and Summerville (2005), meta-analysis of nine published articles containing 11 data sets on regret domains, plus a college sample. Romance is the third-most-cited regret domain (14.8%), behind education (32.2%) and career (22.3%). There is no direct survey asking people who confessed romantic feelings and were rejected whether they regret the disclosure, so the 0.25 action- regret rate is a derived proxy, not a measured figure. It is anchored to the paper's documented temporal pattern: action regrets are more intense in the short term but fade, while inaction regrets persist and intensify over the long term, implying durable action-disclosure regret is the minority outcome. proxy_only is set on this entry to disclose that no direct regret-framed survey of this construct exists.
Fuentes: inacción
Registro de evidencia
Cada número a continuación es lo que reportó cada fuente, con la cita textual en la que nos basamos y cómo llegamos a nuestra cifra. Haz clic en cualquier enlace para verificarlo directamente.
1/3 fuentes verificadas de forma independiente palabra por palabra frente a la fuente citada
[1]Association for Psychological Science — Women More Likely Than Men to Have a Love Regret, NU Study Shows
Verificado
Fuente de referencia
44% of women and 19% of men in the sample reported some romance-related regret; women's regrets included 'the one that got away' and never entering a relationship
Extracto
“"When asked, about 44 percent of women and 19 percent of men said they regretted something related to romance, according to the study by the Kellogg School of Management in Evanston ... Those who discussed their lost loves focused on 'the one that got away' regrets, as well as regrets that they had never entered into a particular relationship."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2008-07-28
Accedido
2026-05-13
Verificación
Extracto recuperado de forma independiente y confirmado palabra por palabra frente a la fuente citada durante nuestra auditoría de fundamentación.
Cálculo
Summerville and Roese study of 370 US adults ages 19-103, drawn from a Northwestern/Kellogg sample. The 44% figure is the women's prevalence of ANY romance-related regret (not an inaction-only subset); the most-discussed themes among those regrets were romantic inaction ones -- "the one that got away" and never entering a particular relationship -- which is why this side is treated as inaction-dominant. The 44% female rate is used in the regret_rate field as the best-documented direct prevalence; the 19% men's rate illustrates the strong gender difference. A composite rate across both sexes would be approximately 30-32%; the gender skew is noted in caveats.
[2]Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (NIH/PMC) — What We Regret Most ... and Why↗ 13 other entries
Revisado por pares
Romance ranks #3 among regret domains (14.8%); regrets of inaction persist longer and are more intense over the long term than regrets of action
Extracto
“"regrets of action are more intense in the short term; regrets of inaction are more intense over the long term ... regrets of inaction persist longer than regrets of action."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2005-09-01
Accedido
2026-05-13
Cálculo
Roese and Summerville (2005), meta-analysis of nine published articles / 11 data sets. Provides the theoretical framework for why inaction regret in romance dominates over time: unexplored counterfactuals remain open-ended and persistent, while action regrets resolve as the emotional valence of the rejection fades. The paper documents this action-short-term / inaction-long-term pattern as a general regret finding (it does not break the temporal pattern out by domain), with romance ranked third (14.8%) among regret domains overall.
[3]Daniel Pink / World Regret Survey — World Regret Survey↗ 3 other entries
Fuente de referencia
In Daniel Pink's World Regret Survey (26,000+ regrets from 134 countries), inaction regrets outnumber action regrets roughly two to one overall, rising to about three to one by people's 50s; connection and romance are among the most-cited durable regret themes
Extracto
“"the World Regret Survey, which has now gathered more than 26,000 regrets from people in 134 countries." [worldregretsurvey.com homepage] Pink's documented ratio: "Inaction regrets outnumbered action regrets in Pink's survey by two to one." [Psychology Today summary] The ~3:1 figure is age-conditional: "By our 50s, we tend to have about three times as many regrets of inaction versus regrets of action."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2022-01-01
Accedido
2026-05-13
Cálculo
World Regret Survey (worldregretsurvey.com), reported in Daniel Pink, The Power of Regret (2022). The homepage states the dataset is "more than 26,000 regrets from people in 134 countries" (an earlier survey snapshot of ~16,000 regrets cited 105-109 countries; the 134 figure is current). Pink's documented OVERALL inaction-to- action ratio is approximately two to one, not three to one; the ~3:1 figure is age-conditional -- "by our 50s ... about three times as many regrets of inaction versus regrets of action" -- and the 20s cohort is roughly balanced. This directional inaction-dominant finding corroborates the romance-specific pattern; connection and romance regrets are cited among the most emotionally durable categories, consistent with the Summerville and Roese findings. This is a self-selected internet convenience sample, so the ratios are descriptive of respondents, not a population estimate.
Advertencias
La tasa de arrepentimiento por inacción (0,44) proviene de un estudio de 370 adultos estadounidenses que midió la tasa femenina de arrepentimiento romántico; la tasa masculina en la misma muestra fue del 19%, y una tasa combinada a través de ambos sexos sería aproximadamente 30-32%. La tasa femenina se usa como la cifra de titular porque es el número más precisamente reportado y ampliamente citado, pero la verdadera tasa de arrepentimiento por inacción de la población depende fuertemente de la composición de género. La tasa de arrepentimiento por acción (0,25) es una estimación derivada, no una cifra directamente medida de una encuesta preguntando "¿se arrepiente de haber confesado?"; no se identificó tal encuesta a gran escala. La cifra 0,25 se basa en el hallazgo de Roese y Summerville de que los arrepentimientos por acción en romance se desvanecen más rápido que los arrepentimientos por inacción y son menores en prevalencia en horizontes temporales medianos a largos. Ambas fuentes primarias ahora tienen más de 15 años; las normas de citas contemporáneas (incluyendo el rechazo mediado por aplicaciones) pueden producir perfiles de arrepentimiento diferentes. La World Regret Survey (26.000+ encuestados) es una muestra de conveniencia de internet autoseleccionada, que puede sobrerrepresentar a personas que han pensado profundamente sobre el arrepentimiento. El regret_delta de -0,19 usa la tasa femenina de inacción del 44%; usar la tasa combinada de 30-32% reduciría el delta a aproximadamente -0,05 a -0,07, lo que sigue siendo dominado por inacción pero más modestamente.
