Dữ liệu đại diện — không có cuộc khảo sát trực tiếp nào về sự hối tiếc cho quyết định này. Tỷ lệ được lấy từ điểm hài lòng và dữ liệu rào cản tiếp cận thay vì câu hỏi trực tiếp về sự hối tiếc. Xem cảnh báo bên dưới.
Hối hận vì hành động
Thổ lộ tình cảm và bị từ chối
25%
~25% hối tiếc về việc đã bày tỏ tình cảm không được đáp lại
Người trưởng thành Mỹ đã tiết lộ tình cảm lãng mạn, nhiều mẫu khác nhau
thay đổi; hối tiếc hành động phai nhanh hơn hối tiếc không hành động theo thời gian
Hối hận vì không hành động
Kìm nén và không bao giờ thổ lộ
44%
44% phụ nữ (19% nam giới) báo cáo hối tiếc không hành động lãng mạn
Người trưởng thành Mỹ tuổi 19-103, nghiên cứu Northwestern University / Summerville
hồi cứu trọn đời
% hối tiếc về lựa chọn này
Thổ lộ tình cảm và bị từ chốiKìm nén và không bao giờ thổ lộ
25%44%
inaction dominates — Không hành động chiếm ưu thế — hầu hết hối tiếc vì đã không hành động.
Quyết định liên quan
Các quyết định tương tự về mặt ngữ nghĩa — cùng lĩnh vực, đánh đổi khác nhau.
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.
Nguồn: hành động
Sổ cái xác nhận
Mỗi con số dưới đây là những gì mỗi nguồn đã báo cáo, cùng với trích dẫn nguyên văn mà chúng tôi dựa vào và cách chúng tôi đưa ra con số của mình. Nhấp vào bất kỳ liên kết nào để xác minh trực tiếp.
1/1 nguồn được xác minh độc lập đúng từng chữ so với nguồn được trích dẫn
[1]Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (NIH/PMC) — What We Regret Most ... and Why
Đã xác minh
↗ 13 other entries
Được bình duyệt
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
Trích đoạn
“"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."
”
Dữ liệu nguồn từ
2005-09-01
Truy cập
2026-05-13
Xác minh
Trích đoạn đã được tải lại độc lập và xác nhận đúng từng chữ so với nguồn được trích dẫn trong quá trình kiểm định căn cứ của chúng tôi.
Tính toán
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.
Nguồn: không hành động
Sổ cái xác nhận
Mỗi con số dưới đây là những gì mỗi nguồn đã báo cáo, cùng với trích dẫn nguyên văn mà chúng tôi dựa vào và cách chúng tôi đưa ra con số của mình. Nhấp vào bất kỳ liên kết nào để xác minh trực tiếp.
1/3 nguồn được xác minh độc lập đúng từng chữ so với nguồn được trích dẫn
[1]Association for Psychological Science — Women More Likely Than Men to Have a Love Regret, NU Study Shows
Đã xác minh
Nguồn tham khảo
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
Trích đoạn
“"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."
”
Dữ liệu nguồn từ
2008-07-28
Truy cập
2026-05-13
Xác minh
Trích đoạn đã được tải lại độc lập và xác nhận đúng từng chữ so với nguồn được trích dẫn trong quá trình kiểm định căn cứ của chúng tôi.
Tính toán
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
Được bình duyệt
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
Trích đoạn
“"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."
”
Dữ liệu nguồn từ
2005-09-01
Truy cập
2026-05-13
Tính toán
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
Nguồn tham khảo
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
Trích đoạn
“"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."
”
Dữ liệu nguồn từ
2022-01-01
Truy cập
2026-05-13
Tính toán
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.
Lưu ý
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.
