Cautious Decision Process Forced by the Effects of Anticipated Regret and Involvement

A lot of evidence has been found to demonstrate the effect of anticipated regret on decision choice, whereas it's lack of clear explanation on how the anticipated regret influence the information processing in decision making. The aim of this paper was to clarify the effect on cognitive behavior in decision process via the method of process tracing, the involvement as modifying variable was considered as well. The results revealed that anticipated regret conducted a cautious information processing. Particularly, the time, quantity of processing increased and style of processing changed partly when anticipated regret was triggered, which the effect could be strengthened in the high-involvement condition or vanished in the low-involvement condition. Otherwise, method by outcome feedback to trigger participants' anticipated regret showed more effectiveness than by question. Finally, the mechanism of the effect observed in the experiment was discussed.