Porcentagem de quem mais tarde se arrepende de cada escolha. As barras e o registro completo aparecem abaixo.
Estilo de vida
Última revisão 2026-05-13
Qualidade das evidências 3.63/5
Pontuação de revisão em oito dimensões segundo a
grelha de qualidade
. Cada dimensão pontuada de 1 a 5.
D1 Verificação das fontes
4/5
D2 Autoridade e independência das fontes
4/5
D3 Precisão da taxa de arrependimento
2/5
D4 Comparabilidade das fontes
2/5
D5 Padrão de Gilovich
5/5
D6 Qualidade da prosa
4/5
D7 Completude das ressalvas
5/5
D8 Qualidade da amostra
3/5
Média3.63/5
Dados proxy — não existe nenhuma pesquisa direta sobre arrependimento para esta decisão. As taxas são derivadas de pontuações de satisfação e dados de barreiras de acesso em vez de perguntas que perguntavam diretamente sobre arrependimento. Veja advertências abaixo.
Arrependimento por ação
Declarar os sentimentos e ser rejeitado
25%
~25% se arrependem de ter confessado sentimentos que não foram correspondidos
Adultos nos EUA que revelaram sentimentos românticos, várias amostras
variável; arrependimentos por ação desaparecem mais rápido do que arrependimentos por inação ao longo do tempo
Arrependimento por omissão
Se conter e nunca se declarar
44%
44% das mulheres (19% dos homens) relatam arrependimento romântico por inação
Adultos nos EUA com idades 19-103, estudo da Northwestern University / Summerville
retrospectivo de vida
% se arrependem desta escolha
Declarar os sentimentos e ser rejeitadoSe conter e nunca se declarar
25%44%
inaction dominates — A inacção domina — a maioria arrepende-se de não ter agido.
Decisões relacionadas
Decisões semanticamente semelhantes — mesmo terreno, compromissos diferentes.
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.
Fontes: acção
Registro de evidências
Cada número abaixo é o que cada fonte relatou, com a citação literal em que nos baseamos e como chegamos ao nosso valor. Clique em qualquer link para verificar diretamente.
1/1 fontes verificadas de forma independente palavra por palavra em relação à fonte 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
Trecho
“"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."
”
Dados da fonte de
2005-09-01
Acessado
2026-05-13
Verificação
Trecho obtido novamente de forma independente e confirmado palavra por palavra em relação à fonte citada durante nossa auditoria de fundamentação.
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.
Fontes: inacção
Registro de evidências
Cada número abaixo é o que cada fonte relatou, com a citação literal em que nos baseamos e como chegamos ao nosso valor. Clique em qualquer link para verificar diretamente.
1/3 fontes verificadas de forma independente palavra por palavra em relação à fonte citada
[1]Association for Psychological Science — Women More Likely Than Men to Have a Love Regret, NU Study Shows
Verificado
Fonte de referência
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
Trecho
“"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."
”
Dados da fonte de
2008-07-28
Acessado
2026-05-13
Verificação
Trecho obtido novamente de forma independente e confirmado palavra por palavra em relação à fonte citada durante nossa auditoria de fundamentação.
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
Trecho
“"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."
”
Dados da fonte de
2005-09-01
Acessado
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
Fonte de referência
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
Trecho
“"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."
”
Dados da fonte de
2022-01-01
Acessado
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.
Ressalvas
The inaction-regret rate (0.44) comes from a study of 370 US adults that measured the female rate of romantic regret; the male rate in the same sample was 19%, and a blended rate across both sexes would be approximately 30-32%. The female rate is used as the headline figure because it is the more precisely reported and widely cited number, but the true population inaction-regret rate depends heavily on gender composition. The action-regret rate (0.25) is a derived estimate, not a directly measured figure from a survey asking "do you regret having confessed?"; no such large-scale survey was identified. The 0.25 figure is grounded in Roese and Summerville's general finding that regrets of action are more intense in the short term while regrets of inaction persist longer and intensify over time (a pattern the paper documents across regrets generally, not broken out by the romance domain). Both primary sources are now more than 15 years old; contemporary dating norms (including app-mediated rejection) may produce different regret profiles. The World Regret Survey (26,000+ respondents) is a self-selected internet convenience sample, which may overrepresent people who have thought deeply about regret. The regret_delta of -0.19 uses the 44% female inaction rate; using the blended 30-32% rate would reduce the delta to approximately -0.05 to -0.07, which remains inaction-dominant but more modestly so.
