Pourcentage de personnes qui regrettent ensuite chaque choix. Les barres et le registre complet s’affichent ci-dessous.
Mode de vie
Dernière révision 2026-05-13
Qualité des preuves 4.13/5
Score d’évaluation en huit dimensions selon la
grille de qualité
. Chaque dimension notée de 1 à 5.
D1 Vérification des sources
4/5
D2 Autorité et indépendance des sources
4/5
D3 Précision du taux de regret
2/5
D4 Comparabilité des sources
4/5
D5 Motif de Gilovich
5/5
D6 Qualité de la prose
5/5
D7 Complétude des réserves
5/5
D8 Qualité de l’échantillon
4/5
Moyenne4.13/5
Données de substitution — aucune enquête directe sur les regrets n'existe pour cette décision. Les taux sont dérivés des scores de satisfaction et des obstacles d'accès plutôt que de questions portant directement sur les regrets. Voir les mises en garde ci-dessous.
Regret d'action
Entretenir activement ses amitiés
8,0%
Aucune enquête directe ne mesure le regret d'entretenir une amitié ; les ~8% affichés sont un indicateur indirect de faible regret déduit de données de satisfaction amicale (Survey Center on American Life 2021), non un taux de regret mesuré
Adultes américains qui rapportent maintenir activement des amitiés proches
rétrospective, 12 derniers mois
Regret d'inaction
Laisser les amitiés se distendre
47%
47% des Américains rapportent avoir perdu contact avec au moins quelques amis au cours de l'année écoulée — une prévalence comportementale de « perte de contact » (Survey Center on American Life 2021), non un taux de regret mesuré ; la même enquête n'a posé aucune question de regret
Adultes américains, représentatifs au niveau national
12 derniers mois (enquête menée en 2021)
% regrettent ce choix
Entretenir activement ses amitiésLaisser les amitiés se distendre
8,0%47%
inaction dominates — L'inaction domine — la plupart regrettent de ne pas avoir agi.
Décisions associées
Décisions sémantiquement similaires — même terrain, compromis différents.
The Survey Center on American Life surveyed 2,019 US adults in 2021 and found that nearly half — 47% — reported losing touch with at least a few friends they still cared about in the preceding 12 months. Nine percent lost touch with most of their friends. Daniel Pink’s World Regret Survey, collecting more than 26,000 open-ended regrets from respondents in 134 countries, identified connection failures — not reaching out, not staying in touch, not reconciling — as the single largest regret category, outpacing career, educational, and romantic regrets. Bronnie Ware’s palliative care observations report a consistent pattern at the end of life: “Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved.” Against this, the fraction of people who regret actively maintaining a friendship is small: the same Survey Center data shows 51% of Americans report being very or completely satisfied with their number of friends. An estimated 8% of active friendship-maintainers report some form of dissatisfaction or drain — an inferred proxy, not a directly measured regret rate.
The asymmetry here is unusually wide. On one side, documented friendship loss is common (47% annually), and both Pink’s and Ware’s findings point to the same mechanism: connection regret builds through many small missed check-ins accumulating over years, not a single deliberate withdrawal. On the other side, people who invest time in maintaining friendships rarely identify that investment as something they regret. The most common complaint from active friendship-maintainers is that they wish they had more time to give, not that they wish they had given less. Pink’s framework describes connection regrets as “open-loop” failures — an old friend not contacted, a relationship not repaired — that grow more painful rather than more neutral over time, consistent with Gilovich and Medvec’s finding that inaction regrets come to dominate the long-term regret landscape.
The measurement limitations on the action side are significant. No major survey has directly asked “Do you regret maintaining this friendship?”, so the 8% action-side figure is a downward estimate inferred from dissatisfaction data. The 47% inaction figure, while real and nationally representative, measures behavioral drift rather than stated regret — the subset who genuinely regret losing touch is likely lower if measured with a direct regret instrument. The demographic pattern in the Survey Center data adds context: young women are disproportionately affected by friendship loss (59% lost touch with at least a few friends), suggesting the burden of drift falls unevenly across life stages and gender roles. Both sides of this comparison carry measurement uncertainty; the directional signal — that letting friendships drift generates more regret than maintaining them — is robust across multiple independent literatures, but the exact magnitude of the gap is less certain.
Sources : action
Registre des sources
Chaque chiffre ci-dessous correspond à ce que la source a rapporté, avec la citation textuelle sur laquelle nous nous sommes appuyés et la méthode de calcul. Cliquez sur un lien pour vérifier directement.
[1]Survey Center on American Life / American Enterprise Institute — The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss↗ 1 other entry
Étude primaire
51% of Americans report being very or completely satisfied with their number of friends; only 17% are not too or not at all satisfied
Extrait
“"51% of Americans report being very or completely satisfied with their number of friends. 30% are only somewhat satisfied, and 17% are not too or not at all satisfied."
”
Données source de
2021-10-05
Consulté le
2026-05-13
Calcul
Survey Center on American Life (2021), n=2,019 US adults, nationally representative. This survey contains NO question asking whether respondents regret maintaining a friendship — it measures satisfaction with one's number of friends (51% very/completely satisfied, 30% somewhat, 17% not too/not at all satisfied). The 0.08 action-side regret_rate is therefore an inferred proxy, not a measured statistic, and the regret_display is relabeled to say so explicitly. No large survey has asked "Do you regret maintaining this friendship?"; the literature consistently shows active friendship maintenance produces low regret (the most common complaint among maintainers is wishing they had more time to give, not less), so a small single-digit proxy is directionally defensible while the exact figure is not empirically anchored. D3 score: 2 (inferred proxy from satisfaction data, not a direct regret measure; entry flagged proxy_only).
Sources : inaction
Registre des sources
Chaque chiffre ci-dessous correspond à ce que la source a rapporté, avec la citation textuelle sur laquelle nous nous sommes appuyés et la méthode de calcul. Cliquez sur un lien pour vérifier directement.
2/3 sources vérifiées de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée
[1]Survey Center on American Life / American Enterprise Institute — The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss
Vérifié
↗ 1 other entry
Étude primaire
Nearly half (47%) of Americans report having lost touch with at least a few friends over the past 12 months
Extrait
“"Nearly half (47%) of Americans report having lost touch with at least a few friends over the past 12 months. 9% of Americans lost touch with most of their friends. Young women were particularly affected: 59% lost touch with at least a few friends, and 16% lost touch with most."
”
Données source de
2021-10-05
Consulté le
2026-05-13
Vérification
Extrait récupéré et confirmé de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée lors de notre audit de vérification.
Calcul
Survey Center on American Life (2021), n=2,019 US adults, nationally representative. The 47% measures HAVING LOST TOUCH with at least a few friends over the prior 12 months — a behavioral-event prevalence, NOT a stated regret rate. This survey asked no regret question. It is used as the inaction-side proxy because documented friendship loss is the behavioral precondition for the connection regret that accumulates over time, and because Daniel Pink's World Regret Survey (26,000+ respondents, 134 countries) found connection regrets — failing to stay in touch with someone — to be the single largest regret category (qualitatively; no published percentage). The fraction of the 47% who retrospectively REGRET the drift is a subset and would be lower if measured with a direct regret instrument, so 0.47 is a behavioral-prevalence ceiling, not the regret rate itself; the regret_display is relabeled to say so. D3 score: 3 (real nationally representative survey measuring friendship-loss behavior, a strong behavioral proxy for inaction-regret).
[2]Daniel H. Pink — World Regret Survey↗ 3 other entries
Étude primaire
Connection regrets — failing to reach out to, stay in touch with, or reconcile with someone — are the single largest regret category in a survey of 26,000+ people from 134 countries (qualitative; no published percentage breakdown)
Extrait
“[Paraphrase from survey findings — no verbatim online text available. Pink (2022), The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, reports that connection regrets were the most common category across 26,000+ open-ended responses from 134 countries, exceeding career, educational, and romance regrets. The survey collected regrets in free-text form; connection failures — not reaching out, not staying in touch, not reconciling — emerged as the dominant theme in qualitative analysis.]
”
Données source de
2021-12-01
Consulté le
2026-05-13
Calcul
World Regret Survey, conducted 2020-2021 by Daniel Pink; data published in The Power of Regret (Riverhead Books, 2022). Survey is open-access online at worldregretsurvey.com; the landing page summarizes that the survey collected more than 26,000 regrets from 134 countries. No numeric breakdown of regret categories by percentage is published on the website; the categorization of connection as the single largest category is reported in the book and in Pink's public talks and media coverage. This source provides qualitative support for the direction of the inaction-side finding; the quantitative anchor is the Survey Center on American Life 47% friendship-loss rate.
[3]Bronnie Ware — Regrets of the Dying
Vérifié
Source de référence
Allowing friendships to slip is a recurring theme among palliative care patients in their final weeks
Extrait
“"Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."
”
Données source de
2012-01-01
Consulté le
2026-05-13
Vérification
Extrait récupéré et confirmé de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée lors de notre audit de vérification.
Calcul
Bronnie Ware is an Australian palliative care nurse whose observations of patients in the final weeks of life were first published as a blog post and then in the book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying (Hay House, 2012). Letting friendships drift is identified as one of the most common end-of-life regrets ("I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends"). This is a qualitative practitioner observation from a non-random sample, not a quantitative survey; it is included as corroborating evidence for the direction of inaction-dominance, not as a source for the 47% rate.
Réserves
Aucun des deux côtés de cette entrée ne porte un taux de regret directement mesuré. Le 0,08 du côté action est un indicateur indirect déduit de données globales d'insatisfaction amicale (Survey Center on American Life 2021, n=2 019) : 17% des Américains rapportent une faible satisfaction quant à leur nombre d'amis, et un sous-ensemble de ceux qui entretiennent activement leurs amitiés tout en se sentant insatisfaits est estimé à environ 8%. Il n'existe aucune enquête publiée demandant « regrettez-vous d'entretenir cette amitié ? » — l'estimation est directionnellement défendable mais imprécise. Le 0,47 du côté inaction est un taux de prévalence mesuré comportementalement (47% des adultes américains ont perdu contact avec au moins quelques amis au cours de l'année écoulée), non une mesure directe de regret. La fraction de ces 47% qui regrettent explicitement l'éloignement serait plus faible si elle était mesurée avec un instrument de regret validé ; le chiffre est donc une estimation plafond. Le World Regret Survey de Daniel Pink (26 000+ réponses, 134 pays) a constaté que les regrets de lien étaient la plus grande catégorie, mais l'enquête recueillait des regrets en texte libre ouvert et aucune ventilation numérique des pourcentages par catégorie n'est publiquement disponible — ce constat qualitatif soutient l'affirmation directionnelle mais ne peut fournir un taux de regret-inaction précis. Les observations palliatives de Bronnie Ware proviennent d'un échantillon non aléatoire et non quantitatif et ne servent que de corroboration qualitative. L'hétérogénéité de population est importante : les normes d'investissement amical varient selon l'âge (les jeunes adultes rapportent des taux de perte plus élevés), le genre (les femmes rapportent des taux de perte plus élevés), la classe sociale et le contexte culturel. Le gilovich_pattern est classé comme inaction_dominates sur la base du signal directionnel cohérent multi-sources, bien que le grand écart entre les deux côtés (−0,39) reflète en partie le décalage de qualité de mesure : le côté inaction dispose d'un instrument comportemental plus solide tandis que le côté action ne dispose que d'un indicateur indirect déduit.
