Poser des limites personnelles fermes dans les relations et au travail vs s'accommoder pour faire plaisir aux autres
Si vous agissez
Poser des limites fermes / dire non
17%
Si vous n’agissez pas
Complaisance / ne pas poser de limites
48%
Pourcentage de personnes qui regrettent ensuite chaque choix. Les barres et le registre complet s’affichent ci-dessous.
Mode de vie
Dernière révision 2026-05-24
Qualité des preuves 4.38/5
Score d’évaluation en huit dimensions selon la
grille de qualité
. Chaque dimension notée de 1 à 5.
D1 Vérification des sources
5/5
D2 Autorité et indépendance des sources
5/5
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
Moyenne4.38/5
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
Poser des limites fermes / dire non
17%
Non mesuré directement : aucune enquête ne demande aux personnes qui posent réellement des limites fermes si elles le regrettent. La barre est une valeur indicative fixée à un chiffre de satisfaction issu de la même enquête — 17% des personnes se décrivant comme cherchant à plaire disent que ce trait a facilité leur vie — qui mesure le contentement à l'égard du fait de chercher à plaire, NON le regret de poser des limites. Il n'est pas inversé en un taux de regret du versant action ; ce versant doit être lu comme non mesuré
Adultes américains qui s'auto-identifient comme complaisants, panel en ligne
sentiment rétrospectif, collecté en août 2024
Regret d'inaction
Complaisance / ne pas poser de limites
48%
48% des personnes se décrivant comme cherchant à plaire disent que le fait d'être ainsi a compliqué leur vie — un indicateur indirect de ressenti de vie (la part qualifiant ce trait de handicap net), NON une mesure directe du regret de ne pas poser de limites
Adultes américains qui s'auto-identifient comme complaisants, panel en ligne
sentiment rétrospectif, collecté en août 2024
% regrettent ce choix
Poser des limites fermes / dire nonComplaisance / ne pas poser de limites
17%48%
inaction dominates — L'inaction domine — la plupart regrettent de ne pas avoir agi.
Décisions associées
Décisions sémantiquement similaires — même terrain, compromis différents.
Approximately 48% of US adults who describe themselves as people-pleasers say being this way has made their life harder, while only 17% say it has made their life easier and 22% report no effect. YouGov’s August 2024 survey of 1,122 US adults established these figures; an earlier YouGov survey from June 2022 (N=1,000) found a comparable 39% reporting “life harder,” with women far more likely than men to report the trait as a net drag (47% versus 26%). The action side — regret among people who actually set firm limits — is not measured in any large representative survey, so there is no direct rate for it. The only same-survey signal is that roughly 17% of people-pleasers say the trait has made their life easier; these are the adults who would plausibly find a wholesale switch to assertive limit-setting harder. That 17% measures satisfaction with the people-pleasing behavior, not regret of boundary-setting, and is surfaced only as a proxy. Givi and Kirk (2023, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) corroborate the order of magnitude through a different lens: across five experiments with more than 2,000 participants, people who declined social invitations systematically overestimated how angry or rejected the inviter would feel, with actual relational damage substantially below anticipated levels. If the social cost of saying no is chronically overestimated, the post-decision regret of saying no should also run lower than the anticipatory anxiety predicts.
The inaction-dominant pattern in this domain is consistent with Roese and Summerville’s foundational 2005 finding in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin that long-term retrospective regret is dominated by things people did not do rather than things they did. Chronic over-accommodation is a sustained pattern of self-assertion inaction, and the Roese-Summerville framework predicts it will accumulate more long-term regret weight than discrete episodes of firm-limit-setting. The YouGov data tracks this prediction directly: a near-three-to-one ratio of “life harder” to “life easier” among self-identified people-pleasers, replicated across two independent surveys two years apart. The dilemma cuts across romantic, workplace, family, and social contexts — the same person who declines to push back on a partner’s request to skip therapy may also accept overtime they did not want, host family they wished would not visit, and attend social events out of guilt. YouGov does not segment by context, so the headline rates are cross-context averages.
The main caveat is that neither rate is a direct regret measurement. The 48% inaction figure is a “made my life harder” sentiment measure — adjacent to but not identical to retrospective regret. The 17% on the action side is not a regret measurement at all: it is the share of people-pleasers who say the trait made their life easier — a satisfaction measure of the inaction behavior, surfaced as a same-survey reference point rather than inverted into a regret-of-boundary-setting rate. No survey directly measures the regret of having set firm limits. The denominator on both sides is conditional on self-identifying as a people-pleaser, which is roughly half the US adult population. The population-wide inaction-regret rate is closer to 23%, but the conditional rate is the relevant figure because the dilemma only arises for adults whose default behavior is over-accommodation. The directional finding — chronic accommodation is regretted at roughly three times the rate of firm limit-setting — is consistent across two independent YouGov samples and corroborated by peer-reviewed work on invitation declining. The precise magnitudes should be held loosely.
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.
1/2 sources vérifiées de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée
[1]YouGov US — Half of self-described people-pleasers think being this way makes life harder
Vérifié
Source de référence
Among US adults who self-identify as people-pleasers (48% of the sample), 17% say being this way has made their life easier, 48% say it has made their life harder, and 22% say it has had no effect
Extrait
“"About half (48%) of Americans definitely or probably would describe themselves as people-pleasers. Among them, 17% of self-described people-pleasers say it has made their life easier; 48% say it's made their life harder. 22% say it has had no effect."
”
Données source de
2024-09-04
Consulté le
2026-05-24
Vérification
Extrait récupéré et confirmé de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée lors de notre audit de vérification.
Calcul
YouGov US online survey of 1,122 US adults, fielded August 26-30, 2024. The 17% figure is the percentage of self-identified people-pleasers who say the trait has made their life EASIER. It measures satisfaction with the people-pleasing (inaction) behavior; it is NOT a measurement of regret among people who set firm limits. No nationally representative survey measures the regret of people who actually set firm limits, so this side has no direct measure. We do not invert "people-pleasing made my life easier" into "regret of boundary-setting" — those are different constructs measured on a different population. The 17% is shown only as a same-survey satisfaction reference point and the entry is flagged proxy_only. Read the bar as "the action side is not directly measured," not as a measured action-side regret rate.
[2]Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Givi & Kirk, 2023); APA press release — Saying No: The Negative Ramifications From Invitation Declines Are Less Severe Than We Think
Revue par les pairs
Across five experiments with more than 2,000 total participants, prospective decliners overestimated how angry and disappointed inviters would feel; in a pilot 77% of respondents reported accepting unwanted invitations because of those concerns
Extrait
“"Across five experiments with more than 2,000 total participants, the negative ramifications of saying no are much less severe than we expect. In an initial pilot study, more than three-quarters (77%) of respondents reported accepting unwanted invitations because of concerns about declining."
”
Données source de
2023-12-11
Consulté le
2026-05-24
Calcul
Givi & Kirk (2023), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published online December 11, 2023 (DOI 10.1037/pspi0000443). APA press release used as the verifiable public URL; the underlying paper is paywalled. Series of five experiments with combined N>2,000 testing the anticipated-versus-actual social cost of declining invitations. Peer-reviewed finding that decliners consistently overestimate the relational damage of saying no. Used as corroborating evidence that the action-side regret rate for firm-limit-setting is plausibly low — if the social cost of declining is consistently milder than feared, the post-decision regret rate should track that pattern. Not a direct regret measurement; supports the order-of-magnitude proxy on the action side.
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]YouGov US — Half of self-described people-pleasers think being this way makes life harder
Source de référence
48% of self-identified people-pleasers say being this way has made their life harder; 17% (very often) and 35% (somewhat often) feel they cannot say no to people; 5% (very often) and 20% (somewhat often) agree with people when they actually disagree
Extrait
“"Nearly half (48%) say being a people-pleaser has made their life harder. Among self-identified people-pleasers, 17% very often and 35% somewhat often feel like they can't say 'no' to people. Five percent very often and 20% somewhat often agree with people when they actually disagree."
”
Données source de
2024-09-04
Consulté le
2026-05-24
Calcul
Same YouGov 2024 survey. 48% of self-described people-pleasers (who comprise 48% of US adults overall) say being this way has made their life harder. We use this as the headline inaction-side rate because it is the closest direct survey measure of regret-equivalent sentiment toward chronic over-accommodation. The denominator is conditional: among ALL US adults, the equivalent population-wide rate is roughly 48% (self-ID rate) × 48% (life-harder rate) ≈ 23%. We use the conditional rate as the headline because the regret-pair dilemma is meaningful only for adults whose default is over-accommodation; for adults who do not over-accommodate by default, the decision does not arise. Not a direct regret measure but the tightest available sentiment anchor.
[2]YouGov US — Women are more likely than men to say they're a people-pleaser
Vérifié
Source de référence
Among self-identified people-pleasers, 39% say being this way has made their life harder; women are markedly more likely than men to report life-harder (47% vs 26%)
Extrait
“"Among Americans who say they're a people-pleaser (49% of the sample), 39% say being this way has made their life harder. Women who self-identify as people-pleasers (47%) are far more likely than men who self-identify as people-pleasers (26%) to say being a people-pleaser has made their life harder."
”
Données source de
2022-06-23
Consulté le
2026-05-24
Vérification
Extrait récupéré et confirmé de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée lors de notre audit de vérification.
Calcul
YouGov US online survey of 1,000 US adults, fielded June 18-21, 2022. Two-year-earlier replication of the headline finding with a comparable rate (39% in 2022 versus 48% in 2024). The 47/26 gender split suggests the regret-equivalent sentiment is heavily gendered, consistent with the broader literature on unmitigated communion (Helgeson) and sociotropy. Used as a cross-time replication anchor for the 2024 headline rate.
[3]Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Roese & Summerville) — What We Regret Most ... and Why
Vérifié
↗ 13 other entries
Revue par les pairs
Regrets of inaction persist longer than regrets of action, in part because they reflect greater perceived opportunity within affected life domains
Extrait
“"Regrets of inaction persist longer than regrets of action in part because they reflect greater perceived opportunity."
”
Données source de
2005-09-01
Consulté le
2026-05-24
Vérification
Extrait récupéré et confirmé de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée lors de notre audit de vérification.
Calcul
Roese & Summerville (2005), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31(9), 1273-1285. Foundational meta-analytic finding that inaction regrets dominate long-term retrospective evaluations. Used as theoretical scaffolding: chronic over-accommodation is a sustained pattern of self-assertion inaction, and the Roese-Summerville pattern predicts it will accumulate more long-term regret weight than discrete firm-limit-setting episodes. Not a direct rate measurement; used as cross-literature support for the inaction-dominant pattern of this decision.
Réserves
Les deux taux sont des indicateurs indirects. Les 48% du versant inaction mesurent la part des personnes s'identifiant comme cherchant à plaire qui disent que ce trait a compliqué leur vie — un ressenti adjacent, mais non identique, au regret rétrospectif de ne pas poser de limites. Le versant action ne comporte aucune mesure directe : aucune enquête ne demande aux personnes qui posent réellement des limites fermes si elles le regrettent. Les 17% affichés de ce côté sont simplement la part des personnes cherchant à plaire qui disent que ce trait a facilité leur vie — une mesure de satisfaction du comportement d'inaction, sur une population différente. Nous ne l'inversons pas en un taux de regret du fait de poser des limites ; il s'agit uniquement d'un point de référence issu de la même enquête, ce qui explique pourquoi l'entrée est signalée proxy_only. Le dénominateur est conditionné au fait de s'identifier comme cherchant à plaire (environ la moitié de la population adulte américaine) ; le taux de regret d'inaction à l'échelle de la population est plus proche de ~23%. Nous utilisons le taux conditionnel car le dilemme n'a de sens que pour les adultes dont le comportement par défaut est la sur-accommodation. Givi et al. (2023, JPSP) apportent des preuves évaluées par les pairs que ceux qui refusent surestiment systématiquement le coût social de dire non, cohérent avec un faible taux de regret du versant action, mais ce n'est pas en soi une mesure du regret. Le domaine de décision couvre les contextes amoureux, professionnel, familial et social ; les données de YouGov ne distinguent pas ces contextes, si bien que les taux principaux doivent être lus comme des moyennes inter-contextes plutôt que spécifiques à un contexte. Une version spécifique au milieu professionnel de ce dilemme est traitée séparément par l'entrée prendre-la-parole-vs-rester-silencieux.
