How multiple reference points influence managers' post-decisional regret

Although regret is the most relevant emotion in the domain of decision making, research addressing the regrets of managers and how these are influenced by multiple reference points is lacking. In the context of a choice set with more than 2 alternatives, this study demonstrates that sales managers evaluated their postdecisional regrets based on three reference points: the best-performing unchosen outcome, the worst-performing unchosen outcome, and their expected outcome. The first 2 are social comparison-based standards and the last is a temporal comparison-based standard. Managers equally favored social comparison and temporal standard information when assessing their postdecisional regrets. In addition, it was found that the feeling of regret was largely influenced by a loss or gain relative to each reference point rather than by the degree of loss or gain.