Remorse

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  actually born in racism gradually and painfully came to a similar realization. The Southern Baptists, by now America’s largest Protestant denomination, in a charged and emotional meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, expressed repentance for their historic origins in a movement to oppose the abolition of slavery: twenty thousand delegates overwhelmingly passed a resolution to repudiate what they had once said on slavery and to make an official apology to African-Americans. They quoted the Bible to prove their new case for condemning slavery, albeit with more good-heartedness than profound scriptural exegesis – and it has to be said that they remain an almost entirely white denomination.35 Other mainstream American Churches, such as the Episcopal Church of the USA, are also aware of their often inglorious role in the story of slavery and its accompanying racism. That is why they may be more sensitive to other liberation struggles than Churches elsewhere which do not have that past story. These statements of penitence are as resonant as those made by European Churches conscious of their tarnished part in the Nazi crimes of the Second World War. They betoken a new humility in Western Christianity born of experience. Such turnarounds in the Church may encourage wariness in those inclined to make confident dogmatic pronouncements intended to lay down unchangeable truths for the future. But humility is by no means the only mood among the Churches worldwide in recent decades. Afrikaner South Africa saw the defence of its special racial system as part of a more general defence of traditional Christian values against a godless liberalism, intent on demolishing the Christian family and all the institutions dependent on it. Conservative Christians everywhere have continued to echo this wider theme: even now that apartheid is only a sour memory, a cultural battle continues. It began at the end of the 1950s, and has now become the widest fault line within Christianity – Chalcedonian, non-Chalcedonian, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal alike – casting more ancient conflicts into the shade. A CULTURAL REVOLUTION FROM THE SIXTIES The nemesis of Pope Paul VI as Church reformer was a pair of issues in human sexuality. In his reaffirmation of universal clerical celibacy and ban on contraception, he had not understood the profound cultural revolution which had been occurring in the West from the early 1960s, in which new understandings and expressions of human relationships played a central role. Alongside sex was a phenomenon which began by affecting European liberal Protestantism, but which quickly spread throughout all the Churches of Western Europe, and

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  “Well, then, get rid of the guy!” Borman was sorry he said it, even sorrier when he saw that his remark had hurt Anders. But he thought the crew didn’t need distractions so close to launch. Anders had more visitors coming. One was his thesis adviser and head of the Department of Physics at the Air Force Institute of Technology; the other was the man’s brother, who was a Jesuit priest. He considered both to be very good friends. Around sunset, Anders took them to the parking lot outside crew quarters, where they all lay back on the hood of a car. By now, the sky had darkened, and the men picked out the slivered crescent of the Moon in the sky. Early that evening, his last night on Earth before launch, Lovell sneaked away from crew quarters to visit Marilyn. She’d been at a party, but when Jim called, she hurried away and met him for a rendezvous at the cottage where she and her children were staying. There he kissed his kids and pulled out a photograph. Taken by one of NASA’s unmanned lunar probes, it showed an angular mountain on the Moon. It was near the Sea of Tranquillity, one of the potential sites Apollo 8 would scout for a future landing mission. “I’m going to name it Mount Marilyn,” he said. — Wake-up would be at 2:30 A.M. The astronauts were to eat dinner, then go to sleep. Launch, at 7:21 A.M., was just twelve hours away. After the meal, the men called their families to say good night and goodbye. Borman spoke first to his boys, then to Susan. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he told her. “I’ll be perfectly safe.” “I know,” Susan said. Before retiring, Borman knelt by his bedside to pray—the Lord’s Prayer, then a request for a successful mission, and finally that he, Lovell, and Anders do their jobs well. But he couldn’t sleep, not for hours. He and his crew had been given only four months to train for the flight, and he was concerned about everyone’s ability to perform flawlessly. More than anything, he dreaded the possibility of having to fly the backup mission—ten endless days in

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  always come before family—and he’d never realized the toll this had taken on Susan. He, too, attended counseling sessions. He considered resigning from Eastern, changing his hard-charging ways. But he realized, with the doctor’s help, that such a move would run counter to his DNA; it would do no one any good if he tried to become someone he was not. Instead, he promised to himself and to Susan: He would make more time for her, he would do more to communicate with her. And he swore to himself never to let anything like this happen again to the person he loved most. Susan stayed for four months at the Institute of Living before returning home to Miami. From that day forward, neither she nor Frank touched alcohol again. Susan even brought home a friend from the facility, a young woman with addiction issues who’d been rejected by her family. Susan helped the woman find an apartment and a job, then counseled her for months until she’d settled in to the community. After that, Susan threw herself into volunteer work, helping organizations that fought drug abuse, an effort that would extend to a national scope in later years. Frank had never known a feeling of pride such as he felt for Susan in the months after she came home. In May 1975, Borman was elected president and chief operations officer of Eastern Airlines. He was beloved by many in the company, from board members to pilots to mechanics. Often, he worked unloading baggage at the airport or checking engine parts on the tarmac, and he drove an old Chevy to work. In a later newspaper profile, another airline executive would say of him, “He kind of preceded all the ‘excellence’ books.” Less than two years later, Borman became chairman of the board at Eastern, and he appeared in several of the company’s television commercials. Even on TV, he couldn’t help but talk straight. “Selling you a seat on Eastern Airlines isn’t easy. It’s not easy to sell you on any airline. You know, they’re all pretty much the same,” he said in one spot. For several years under Borman, Eastern enjoyed record-setting profits. But labor difficulties, and the deregulation of the airline industry, caused a downturn in the company’s business. Borman fought to right the ship, even making concessions that went against his instincts. For a time, the moves worked. But after a downturn in the economy, and new labor conflicts, Eastern was sold to new owners. After more than a decade at the helm, Borman resigned as the company’s chairman in 1986.

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “I underestimated Carding. If I’d known how he would react, I would have handled things differently. I would have returned with him to London, collected my things, and then made arrangements to come back. Instead I sent my abigail—a stupid, stupid mistake. Carding wasted no time. He went through my house the night he returned and disposed of all of my clothes and jewelry, most of which I had acquired before I met him. He ceased paying the servants here, so they left. The ones we have now deserve better recompense for their efforts. All we can offer is food and a roof over their heads, hence the reason I don’t overtax them with cleaning areas that aren’t used.” “What of the money you’d saved?” “It wasn’t money I saved but jewelry.” “Which Carding stole,” Hugh finished. She ran her fingertips over the backs of his hands, a soft, absentminded caress he enjoyed far too much. “In deference to Glenmoore’s feelings, I attempted to hide what his son was doing, but he knew. As his condition worsened, he gave me the map, books, and journal. He wanted to repay me for seeing him through his last days, and he hoped to ensure my future in some way.” “But once he was gone, why didn’t you leave? As beautiful as you are, you must have known you could secure another protector.” She turned in his arms, a position that pressed her breasts to his chest. Hugh’s breath hissed out at the contact, and he struggled to concentrate on her next words. “Everyone here relies on me. If I leave, what will happen to them? They are excellent servants, but very few employers can look beyond their handicaps. Besides it’s not too dreadful. We eat well. We’re clothed and warm.” “Then the map is just a hobby?” He stroked his hands down her back. “You appeared quite engrossed in it earlier.” “That is due to my pride.” Charlotte arched into his caress. “I dislike living under the duke’s thumb. It allows him to feel that he’s won, that he’s bested me. If I could acquire financial independence, I could control my own fate. That’s worth studying the map with all the enthusiasm I can muster. Besides, there was nothing else to occupy me in this weather.” She pressed a kiss to his nipple. “Until you came along.” Hugh tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’ve never considered keeping a mistress, but—” “Why pay for what I give you for free?” she interrupted with a sly curve to her lips. “You’re avoiding the subject again.” He slid lower and draped her body over his. “You are quite adept at evasiveness.” “I am adept at a great many things.” He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose, pleased that she’d confided so much in him. “Is Her Grace harmless?” “Oh, yes,” she assured him. “She’s no danger to you.” “Then why did she venture into my room this morning?”

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  23 To Make the World Protestant (1700-1914) SLAVERY AND ITS ABOLITION: A NEW CHRISTIAN TABOO In the United States of America, alongside ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, given Congress’s blessing in the twentieth century, there is a rather older unofficial national anthem: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound That sav’d a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see. ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears reliev’d; How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believ’d! A haunting melismatic tune, an anonymous product of the popular hymnody of the eastern American seaboard, has fixed these words as emblematic of American Protestantism, beloved alike among black, white and Native American congregations. Yet they come from a different world which has never had quite the same affection for them – a remote and scattered parish in Buckinghamshire, west of London, where they were penned by a former slave trader turned parson of Olney.1 At many levels, ‘Amazing Grace’ is a fitting anthem to commemorate a century of Anglo-American Protestant expansion, whose prosperity had been founded on slave-owning and slave-trading. That same Protestant society then led the world away from slavery. In that hour when John Newton ‘first believ’d’, he saw no incongruity between his newly awakened faith and his trade of shipping fellow human beings from West Africa to America. In fact he saw the slave trade as having helped him reshape his life after a chaotic youth, and in his autobiography,

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  He lowered his head. “Ah hell, Jules. You are correct, as usual. I’m dreadfully sorry for having gotten us into this morass.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked at her with suddenly weary eyes. “I’m not suited to being Montrose. I never have been. You have no idea how often I wish Father and Mother were still alive. I miss them, and I had so much yet to learn . . .” “I understand, Hugh, truly. But you are the only one who can do this,” she said with a sigh. “We all have responsibilities in life. This is your burden to bear. I will assist you as best I can and help you find your footing, but you will have to do what is necessary to keep yourself there.” He began to pace. “Have you discussed our situation with Fontaine?” “Not yet.” “But Jules,” Hugh cried, “you have to tell him.” Julienne narrowed her eyes. “Exactly how much trouble are we in?” He flushed, and her gut clenched. “Cut to the heart of it,” she ordered. “I don’t have the stomach to listen to an accounting of every shilling.” Hugh quit pacing and faced her squarely. “It’s mostly gambling debts.” “I’m aware of that. How much, Hugh?” She rubbed the space between her brows, fighting off a headache. “Well, I owe White’s twenty thousand pounds and—” “Twenty thousand?” she screeched. “Hush, Jules!” He winced and shot a glance at the door. “Perhaps you should sit.” “Good heavens,” she muttered, her eyes widening. Julienne began to tap her foot in a rapid staccato on the Aubusson rug. “Tell me that is your largest creditor.” “Now, Julienne, I realize—” “Out with it. We don’t have all night.” “We should discuss this at home.” “Oh, no. Right here will be sufficient.” She arched a brow. “Who is your largest creditor, and how much do you owe them?” Hugh’s shoulders slumped. “Remington’s. I owe one hundred thousand pounds.” Julienne swayed on her feet. “One hundred thousand?” she breathed as the blood drained from her face. “To Lucien Remington?” He reached out to steady her. “Don’t faint, Jules,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry about all of this, but that bastard Remington kept my accounts open. White’s cut me off at twenty thousand, but—” “No more!” she snapped, pushing him away. “Don’t blame Lucien Remington for your weakness. I will not have you disparaging him in any way. Do you understand? In any way. He has made something of himself, built an empire. You have done this to us. You alone are responsible.” Hugh recoiled from her sharp tone, one she’d never used with him before. “He could ruin us!” “And who gave him that power?” she countered. He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off with an upraised hand. “I’m exhausted, and I don’t wish to discuss your problems anymore this evening. Fetch your cloak. We’re leaving.”

• From The Greatest Controversies of Early Christian History (2013)

  83 The Forensic Model  Some of Paul’s beliefs remained the same after his vision as before, but of course, some of them changed and in a rather drastic way. Jesus was alive, and the only way for him to be alive again was for God to have raised him, which means that he did not stand under God’s curse. He was, in fact, favored by God.  How could Jesus be favored by God given that he had suffered such an ignominious death? Paul came to think that Jesus’s death must not have been for anything that he had done wrong. In theological terms, Jesus did not die for his own sins. But if Jesus’s death was in accordance with God’s plan, then his death must have been for some reason. Paul reasoned that his death was for the sins of others.  God’s plan apparently was for his Son, Christ—the messiah Jesus— to die as a sacri fi ce for the sins of others. That means, though, that the divine plan is not to save people by having them follow the Law; instead, God saved people by the perfect sacri fi ce of Christ. Thus, Paul changed his understanding of what it means to be made right with God. Being made right with God had nothing to do with being Jewish and keeping the Torah. Righteousness can come to anyone, whether Jewish or Gentile, who believes in Jesus’s death and resurrection.  More speci fi cally, after he came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus, Paul worked out a way of understanding how it is that Jesus’s death puts a person right with God. o Paul understood the death of Jesus in a legal sense. In this way of thinking, Paul imagined God to be a lawgiver and a judge. God had given his Law to people, and people had broken it; everyone had sinned—disobeyed what God demanded. o In this legal analogy, the penalty for breaking the Law was death, and everyone had to pay the penalty. But Christ paid the penalty of death that others owed. Those who are willing to accept the death of Jesus as the payment for their sins can be right with God. They can have a restored relationship with God

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  Sebastian ached at the thought of returning her to her father, wishing he could spirit her away and keep her safe from the choices of his past, choices that made it impossible for them to ever be together. Never before had he regretted anything he’d done. Now he regretted it all. “I’d offer you the bath,” she murmured, “but the water is certainly cold by now.” Looking at the small hip bath, he smiled. “It’s perfect. Thank you.” He retrieved a towel from the washstand and dipped it in the cold water. Then he went to her and cleansed his lust from her body, his cock hardening again as her nipples puckered under his touch. Olivia was so small compared to him, such tiny, sweetly curved perfection. And he’d rutted upon her like an animal. Cursing silently, Sebastian turned from the arousing sight of her and quickly stripped from his breeches. With a soft hiss, he sank into the chilled water. He glanced at his wife, biting back a grin as she slid from the tabletop and looked modestly at the wall. “Aren’t you curious to see the part of me that you so recently pleasured?” he asked. She blushed. Keeping her eyes averted, Olivia moved to her trunks, holding the ruined gown against her swollen nipples. She was a ravishing vision, and his body was already eager for a repeat performance. Sebastian scrunched down in the too-small tub and concentrated on the chilly temperature of the water to cool his blood. It was a testament of paternal love that fresh water was set aside for this purpose. He frowned when she pressed a bar of fine, French-milled soap into his hand. Scented of musk and bergamot, it was definitely a masculine toilet item. “Why do you have a man’s soap?” he asked sharply. Damnation. He was jealous! Some of the afterglow faded from her eyes. “’Tis my father’s favorite. One more or less will not be missed.” She turned away, but not before he caught the hurt evident on her delicate features. Sebastian almost apologized, and then reconsidered. It was best if Olivia did not come to care for him, a circumstance made more likely by the intense passion they’d just shared. Distance had to be created between them—for both their sakes. Apparently, he had a fondness for this woman—his wife—that was too threatening to even consider. Rushing the rest of his bath, Sebastian dressed in silence, eager to flee the intense feelings Olivia engendered. On his way out, he paused in the doorway. “A few of the crewmen will be down shortly to dump the tub water. I’ll order more to be heated for you. For God’s sake, don’t shoot anyone. It will take some time . . .” “I understand. Thank you.” She remained intensely focused on straightening the already orderly contents of her trunk.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  SOMETIMES A VAGUE NOTION You wake up with a cat on your chest. You are on a couch, wrapped in a quilt. After a few minutes you recognize Megan’s apartment. Her bed is empty. The clock on the nightstand says 11:13. That would be A.M., judging by the sunlight. The last thing you remember is an amorous lunge at Megan somewhere in the P.M.; presumably unsuccessful. You have the feeling you have made a fool out of yourself. You sit up in bed and marvel at this strange pair of pajamas. You stand up. There is a note on the kitchen table: Eggs, English muffins and orange juice in fridge. Your clothes are hanging in bathroom. Give a call later on. Love—Megan. At least she doesn’t hate you. Perhaps you did not entirely disgrace yourself. Better not to think about it. You find your clothes in the bathroom. Everything is stiff and clean as if freshly laundered. The calico cat jumps up on the sink and rubs its head on your hip as you dress. You should leave a note for Meg. You find a pen and a fat pad in which every sheet has MEMO written across the top. Dear Meg—Thanks for the bed and board. Dinner was delicious. Now what? Should you acknowledge loss of full recall? I guess I nodded off a little early. The question is, what did you do before that? For that matter, what about after? What you need is an all-purpose apology. Something to cover each possible misdemeanor. Please excuse my lapse from gentlemanly comportment. Let’s get together soon, maybe for lunch. You rip this up. On the new sheet you write: Dear Megan—I’m sorry. I know I’m always saying that, but I mean it. Thank you. The phone is ringing when you get back to your apartment. Living dangerously, you answer. It’s Richard Fox, the reporter. He says he heard a rumor about your recent loss of employment. He says he liked a

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  woman married to a man who suffers from an ulcerated condition of the stomach might identify eating parsnips as the cause of his indigestion. The doctor might identify the ulcerated condition as the cause and the meal as a mere occasion.” Unusual events call for causal explanations and also evoke counterfactual thoughts, and the two are closely related. The same event can be compared to either a personal norm or the norm of other people, leading to different counterfactuals, different causal attributions, and different emotions (regret or blame): Herbert L. A. Hart and Tony Honoré, Causation in the Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 33. remarkably uniform: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “The Simulation Heuristic,” in Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, ed. Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 160–73. applies to blame: Janet Landman, “Regret and Elation Following Action and Inaction: Affective Responses to Positive Versus Negative Outcomes,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 13 (1987): 524–36. Faith Gleicher et al., “The Role of Counterfactual Thinking in Judgment of Affect,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 16 (1990): 284–95. actions that deviate from the default: Dale T. Miller and Brian R. Taylor, “Counterfactual Thought, Regret, and Superstition: How to Avoid Kicking Yourself,” in What Might Have Been: The Social Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking, ed. Neal J. Roese and James M. Olson (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1995), 305–31. produce blame and regret: Marcel Zeelenberg, Kees van den Bos, Eric van Dijk, and Rik Pieters, “The Inaction Effect in the Psychology of Regret,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82 (2002): 314–27. brand names over generics: Itamar Simonson, “The Influence of Anticipating Regret and Responsibility on Purchase Decisions,” Journal of Consumer Research 19 (1992): 105–18. clean up their portfolios: Lilian Ng and Qinghai Wang, “Institutional Trading and the Turn-of-the-Year Effect,” Journal of Financial Economics 74 (2004): 343–66. loss averse for aspects of your life: Tversky and Kahneman, “Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice.” Eric J. Johnson, Simon Gächter, and Andreas Herrmann, “Exploring the Nature of Loss Aversion,” Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, University of Nottingham, Discussion Paper Series, 2006. Edward J. McCaffery, Daniel Kahneman, and Matthew L. Spitzer, “Framing the Jury: Cognitive Perspectives on Pain and Suffering,” Virginia Law Review 81 (1995): 1341–420.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  girl's disrobing reveals. His eyes take in the large breasts, the slim waist, the hair cascading down to the defenseless coccyx; but Lefty doesn't make connections. The girl fills a hookah for him. Soon he drifts off, no longer hearing the voice in his head. In the soft hashish dream of the ensuing hours, he loses sense of who he is and who he's with. The limbs of the prostitute become those of another woman. A few times he calls out a name, but by then he is too stoned to notice. Only later, showing him out, does the girl bring him back to reality. "By the way, I'm Irini. We don't have a Desdemona here." The next morning he awoke at the Cocoon Inn, awash in recrim- inations. He left the city and climbed back up the mountain to Bithynios. His pockets (empty) made no sound. Hung over and 32 feverish, Lefty told himself that his sister was right: it was time for him to get married. He would marry Lucille, or Victoria. He would have children and stop going down to Bursa and little by little he'd change; he'd get older; everything he felt now would fade into mem- ory and then into nothing. He nodded his head; he fixed his hat. Back in Bithynios, Desdemona was giving those two beginners fin- ishing lessons. While Lefty was still sleeping it off at the Cocoon Inn, she invited Lucille Kafkalis and Victoria Pappas over to the house. The girls were even younger than Desdemona, still living at home with dieir parents. They looked up to Desdemona as the mistress of her own home. Envious of her beauty, they gazed admiringly at her; flattered by her attentions, they confided in her; and when she began to give them advice on their looks, they listened. She told Lucille to wash more regularly and suggested she use vinegar under her arms as an antiperspirant. She sent Victoria to a Turkish woman who special- ized in removing unwanted hair. Over the next week, Desdemona taught the girls everything she'd learned from the only beauty maga- zine she'd ever seen, a tattered catalogue called Lingerie Parisienne. The catalogue had belonged to her father. It contained thirty-two pages of photographs showing models wearing brassieres, corsets, garter belts, and stockings. At night, when everyone was sleeping, her father used to take it out of the bottom drawer of his desk. Now Desdemona studied the catalogue in secret, memorizing the pictures so that she could re-create them later.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "At least he's not your brother? She got to her feet, glaring. She looked like she might cry. She hadn't wiped her mouth. There was jam on it, crumbs. I was struck dumb by the sight of this beloved face working itself up into what looked like hatred. My own face must have been reacting, too. I could feel my eyes going wide and scared. The Object was waiting for me to say something but nothing came to mind. So finally she shoved her chair away and said, "Jerome's up- stairs. Why don't you go climb in bed with him." And she stormed off. A low moment followed. Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart. On top of panic that I'd lost my friend, I was suddenly beset by worries about my reputation. Was I really a slut? I hadn't even liked it. But I had done it, hadn't I? I had let him do it. Fear of retribution came next. What if I got pregnant? What then? My face at the breakfast table was the face of all mathematical girls, counting days, measuring liq- uids. It was at least a minute before I remembered that I couldn't be pregnant. That was one good thing about being a late bloomer. Still, I was upset. I was certain that the Object would never talk to me again. 378 I climbed the stairs and got back into bed, pulling a pillow over my face to block out the summer light. But there was no hiding from reality that morning. No more than five minutes later the bedsprings sagged under new weight. Peeking out, I saw that Jerome had come to visit. He was lying on his back, looking cozy, already installed. Instead of a robe he had on a duck hunting coat. The ends of his frayed boxer shorts were visible below. He had a mug of coffee in one hand and I noticed that his fingernails were painted black. The morning light coming from the side window showed stubble on his chin and above his upper lip. Against the flat, wasted, dyed hair these orange shoots were like life returning to a scorched landscape. "Good morning, dahling," he said. "Hi." "Feeling a little under the weather, are we?" "Yeah," I said. "I was pretty drunk last night." "You didn't seem that drunk to me, dahling." "Well, I was." Jerome now dropped the bit. He flopped back into the pillows and sipped his coffee and sighed. With one finger he tapped his fore- head for a while. Then he spoke. "Just in case you were having any of the hackneyed worries, you should know that I still respect you and all that shit."

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  identical. They both now own stock A and both would have been better off by the same amount if they owned stock B. The only difference is that George got to where he is by acting, whereas Paul got to the same place by failing to act. This short example illustrates a broad story: people expect to have stronger emotional reactions (including regret) to an outcome that is produced by action than to the same outcome when it is produced by inaction. This has been verified in the context of gambling: people expect to be happier if they gamble and win than if they refrain from gambling and get the same amount. The asymmetry is at least as strong for losses, and it applies to blame as well as to regret. The key is not the difference between commission and omission but the distinction between default options and actions that deviate from the default. When you deviate from the default, you can easily imagine the norm—and if the default is associated with bad consequences, the discrepancy between the two can be the source of painful emotions. The default option when you own a stock is not to sell it, but the default option when you meet your colleague in the morning is to greet him. Selling a stock and failing to greet your coworker are both departures from the default option and natural candidates for regret or blame. In a compelling demonstration of the power of default options, participants played a computer simulation of blackjack. Some players were asked “Do you wish to hit?” while others were asked “Do you wish to stand?” Regardless of the question, saying yes was associated with much more regret than saying no if the outcome was bad! The question evidently suggests a default response, which is, “I don’t have a strong wish to do it.” It is the departure from the default that produces regret. Another situation in which action is the default is that of a coach whose team lost badly in their last game. The coach is expected to make a change of personnel or strategy, and a failure to do so will produce blame and regret. The asymmetry in the risk of regret favors conventional and risk-averse choices. The bias appears in many contexts. Consumers who are reminded that they may feel regret as a result of their choices show an increased preference for conventional options, favoring brand names over generics. The behavior of the managers of financial funds as the year approaches its end also shows an effect of anticipated evaluation: they tend to clean up their portfolios of unconventional and otherwise questionable stocks. Even life-or-death decisions can be affected. Imagine a physician with a gravely ill patient. One treatment fits the normal standard of care; another is unusual. The physician has some reason to believe that the unconventional treatment improves the patient’s chances, but the evidence is inconclusive. The physician who prescribes the unusual treatment faces a substantial risk of regret, blame, and perhaps litigation. In hindsight, it

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  “Tell her to think like a trader! You win a few, you lose a few.” “I decided to evaluate my portfolio only once a quarter. I am too loss averse to make sensible decisions in the face of daily price fluctuations.” “They never buy extended warranties. That’s their risk policy.” “Each of our executives is loss averse in his or her domain. That’s perfectly natural, but the result is that the organization is not taking enough risk.” 32 Keeping Score Except for the very poor, for whom income coincides with survival, the main motivators of money-seeking are not necessarily economic. For the billionaire looking for the extra billion, and indeed for the participant in an experimental economics project looking for the extra dollar, money is a proxy for points on a scale of self-regard and achievement. These rewards and punishments, promises and threats, are all in our heads. We carefully keep score of them. They shape our preferences and motivate our actions, like the incentives provided in the social environment. As a result, we refuse to cut losses when doing so would admit failure, we are biased against actions that could lead to regret, and we draw an illusory but sharp distinction between omission and commission, not doing and doing, because the sense of responsibility is greater for one than for the other. The ultimate currency that rewards or punishes is often emotional, a form of mental self-dealing that inevitably creates conflicts of interest when the individual acts as an agent on behalf of an organization. Mental Accounts Richard Thaler has been fascinated for many years by analogies between the world of accounting and the mental accounts that we use to organize and run our lives, with results that are sometimes foolish and sometimes very helpful. Mental accounts come in several varieties. We hold our money in different accounts, which are sometimes physical, sometimes only mental. We have spending money, general savings, earmarked savings for our children’s education or for medical emergencies. There is a clear hierarchy in our willingness to draw on these accounts to cover current needs. We use accounts for self-control purposes, as in making a household budget, limiting the daily consumption of espressos, or increasing the time spent exercising. Often we pay for self-control, for instance simultaneously putting money in a savings account and maintaining debt on credit cards. The Econs of the rational-agent model do not resort to mental accounting: they have a comprehensive view of outcomes and are driven by

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  I saw those kids and the thought of paying for that barn . . . we barely have enough money to pay the bills . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry.”He walked out of the room, the belt looped in his hand like a noose.That night under the tent, he took the microphone from Brother Cotton with his head slightly bowed.“I know we all like to shout and have a good time in the name of the Lord, but I feel a different spirit here tonight, a grieved spirit. We need to wait and see where it leads us.”“Yes. Amen.”“Brother Cotton, would you bring me my guitar?”He sat on the edge of the platform and strummed his guitar.“It’s been a hard week. The devil has stirred things up amongst the evangelistic team. Sometimes when you’re fight’en the devil, it’s easy to start fight’en each other.”“Yes it is.”“The people of God got to pull together. We got to help each other out, not knock each other out.”He chuckled and kept strumming.“I got a little song I want to sing ’bout how it’s s’posed to be.”Brother Terrell’s mouth went to the side of his face and he sang about how the rough, hard way was eased when we shared one another’s burdens. The audience clapped along but did not join in, even though we knew the words. Brother Terrell with his guitar was a solo performance. He finished the song, unhooked his guitar strap, and stood up to put the instrument back in its case, talking to the audience while he did so.“The Bible says confession is good for the soul, amen?” He snapped the case shut.“Amen. Yes it is.”He turned to face the crowd. “Well, sometimes the old natural man gets away from you and you do thangs you wish’t you hadn’t done. How many done things they was sorry for?”Hands went up all over the tent.He tucked the microphone cord through his belt loop and walked down the prayer ramp. “The Bible says don’t let the sun go down on your anger. I got mad today, mad at my kids, mad at Sister Johnson’s kids. They was just being kids. Y’all know how kids are?”“Yes, Lord. We do. Uh-huh.”“It’s okay to whip your kids when they need it. But I lost my temper. Kids, y’all come on up to the front. I want to make things right.”Betty Ann motioned for Pam, Gary, and me to go to the front. Randall appeared from the other side of the platform. Brother Terrell knelt down and gathered us in his arms. His face was wet with tears.“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”Pam and Randall cried. Gary cried. I cried.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  anticipate more regret than they will actually experience, because they underestimate the efficacy of the psychological defenses they will deploy— which they label the “psychological immune system.” Their recommendation is that you should not put too much weight on regret; even if you have some, it will hurt less than you now think. Speaking of Keeping Score “He has separate mental accounts for cash and credit purchases. I constantly remind him that money is money.” “We are hanging on to that stock just to avoid closing our mental account at a loss. It’s the disposition effect.” “We discovered an excellent dish at that restaurant and we never try anything else, to avoid regret.” “The salesperson showed me the most expensive car seat and said it was the safest, and I could not bring myself to buy the cheaper model. It felt like a taboo tradeoff.” 33 Reversals You have the task of setting compensation for victims of violent crimes. You consider the case of a man who lost the use of his right arm as a result of a gunshot wound. He was shot when he walked in on a robbery occurring in a convenience store in his neighborhood. Two stores were located near the victim’s home, one of which he frequented more regularly than the other. Consider two scenarios: (i) The burglary happened in the man’s regular store. (ii) The man’s regular store was closed for a funeral, so he did his shopping in the other store, where he was shot. Should the store in which the man was shot make a difference to his compensation? You made your judgment in joint evaluation, where you consider two scenarios at the same time and make a comparison. You can apply a rule. If you think that the second scenario deserves higher compensation, you should assign it a higher dollar value. There is almost universal agreement on the answer: compensation should be the same in both situations. The compensation is for the crippling injury, so why should the location in which it occurred make any difference? The joint evaluation of the two scenarios gave you a chance to examine your moral principles about the factors that are relevant to victim compensation. For most people, location is not one of these factors. As in other situations that require an explicit comparison, thinking was slow and System 2 was involved. The psychologists Dale Miller and Cathy McFarland, who originally designed the two scenarios, presented them to different people for single

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I was walking home from my final test, a difficult but ultimately (I hoped) successful battle with precalculus that would win me the B-minus I so richly desired. It was genuinely hot out again, warm like she was. And I felt okay. Tomorrow, my parents would come and load up my stuff, and we’d watch graduation and then go back to Florida. The Colonel was going home to his mother to spend the summer watching the soybeans grow, but I could call him long-distance, so we’d be in touch plenty. Takumi was going to Japan for the summer, and Lara was again to be driven home via green limo. I was just thinking that it was all right not to know quite where Alaska was and quite where she was going that night, when I opened the door to my room and noticed a folded slip of paper on the linoleum floor. It was a single piece of lime green stationery. At the top, it read in calligraphy: From the Desk of…Takumi Hikohito Pudge/Colonel: I am sorry that I have not talked to you before. I am not staying for graduation. I leave for Japan tomorrow morning. For a long time, I was mad at you. The way you cut me out of everything hurt me, and so I kept what I knew to myself. But then even after I wasn’t mad anymore, I still didn’t say anything, and I don’t even really know why. Pudge had that kiss, I guess. And I had this secret. You’ve mostly figured this out, but the truth is that I saw her that night. I’d stayed up late with Lara and some people, and then I was falling asleep and I heard her crying outside my back window. It was like 3:15 that morning, maybe, and I walked out there and saw her walking through the soccer field. I tried to talk to her, but she was in a hurry. She told me that her mother was dead eight years that day, and that she always put flowers on her mother’s grave on the anniversary, but she forgot that year. She was out there looking for flowers, but it was too early—too wintry. That’s how I knew about January 10. I still have no idea whether it was suicide. She was so sad, and I didn’t know what to say or do. I think she counted on me to be the one person who would always say and do the right things to help her, but I couldn’t. I just thought she was looking for flowers. I didn’t know she was going to go. She was drunk, just trashed drunk, and I really didn’t think she would drive or anything. I thought she would just cry herself to sleep and then drive to visit her mom the next day or something. She walked away, and then I heard a car start. I don’t know what I was thinking.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  marriages, and unpromising research projects. I have often observed young scientists struggling to salvage a doomed project when they would be better advised to drop it and start a new one. Fortunately, research suggests that at least in some contexts the fallacy can be overcome. The sunk-cost fallacy is identified and taught as a mistake in both economics and business courses, apparently to good effect: there is evidence that graduate students in these fields are more willing than others to walk away from a failing project. Regret Regret is an emotion, and it is also a punishment that we administer to ourselves. The fear of regret is a factor in many of the decisions that people make (“Don’t do this, you will regret it” is a common warning), and the actual experience of regret is familiar. The emotional state has been well described by two Dutch psychologists, who noted that regret is “accompanied by feelings that one should have known better, by a sinking feeling, by thoughts about the mistake one has made and the opportunities lost, by a tendency to kick oneself and to correct one’s mistake, and by wanting to undo the event and to get a second chance.” Intense regret is what you experience when you can most easily imagine yourself doing something other than what you did. Regret is one of the counterfactual emotions that are triggered by the availability of alternatives to reality. After every plane crash there are special stories about passengers who “should not” have been on the plane—they got a seat at the last moment, they were transferred from another airline, they were supposed to fly a day earlier but had had to postpone. The common feature of these poignant stories is that they involve unusual events—and unusual events are easier than normal events to undo in imagination. Associative memory contains a representation of the normal world and its rules. An abnormal event attracts attention, and it also activates the idea of the event that would have been normal under the same circumstances. To appreciate the link of regret to normality, consider the following scenario: Mr. Brown almost never picks up hitchhikers. Yesterday he gave a man a ride and was robbed. Mr. Smith frequently picks up hitchhikers. Yesterday he gave a man a ride and was robbed.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  You’ve done the damage you could, Pudge, and I looked past her, into the room I’d only entered once, where I learned that kissing or no, I couldn’t talk to her—and before the silence could get too uncomfortable, I talked. “I’m sorry,” I said. “For what?” she asked, still looking toward me but not quite at me. “For ignoring you. For everything,” I said. “You deedn’t have to be my boyfriend.” She looked so pretty, her big eyes blinking fast, her cheeks soft and round, and still the roundness could only remind me of Alaska’s thin face and her high cheekbones. But I could live with it—and, anyway, I had to. “You could have just been my friend,” she said. “I know. I screwed up. I’m sorry.” “Don’t forgive that asshole,” Katie cried from inside the room. “I forgeeve you.” Lara smiled and hugged me, her hands tight around the small of my back. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and smelled violets in her hair. “I don’t forgive you,” Katie said, appearing in the doorway. And although Katie and I were not well acquainted, she felt comfortable enough to knee me in the balls. She smiled then, and as I crumpled into a bow, Katie said, “Now I forgive you.” Lara and I took a walk to the lake—sans Katie—and we talked. We talked—about Alaska and about the past month, about how she had to miss me and miss Alaska, while I only had to miss Alaska (which was true enough). I told her as much of the truth as I could, from the firecrackers to the Pelham Police Department and the white tulips. “I loved her,” I said, and Lara said she loved her, too, and I said, “I know, but that’s why. I loved her, and after she died I couldn’t think about anything else. It felt, like, dishonest. Like cheating.” “That’s not a good reason,” she said. “I know,” I answered. She laughed softly. “Well, good then. As long as you know.” I knew I wasn’t going to erase that anger, but we were talking. — As darkness spread that evening, the frogs croaked and a few newly resurrected insects buzzed about campus, and the four of us—Takumi, Lara, the Colonel, and I—walked through the cold gray light of a full moon to the Smoking Hole. “Hey, Colonel, why do you call eet the Smoking Hole?” Lara asked. “Eet’s, like, a tunnel.” “It’s like fishing hole,” the Colonel said. “Like, if we fished, we’d fish here. But we smoke. I don’t know. I think Alaska named it.” The Colonel pulled a cigarette out of his pack and threw it into the water. “What the hell?” I asked. “For her,” he said. I half smiled and followed his lead, throwing in a cigarette of my own. I handed Takumi and Lara cigarettes, and they followed suit. The smokes bounced and danced in the stream for a few moments, and then they floated out of sight.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Even in hungover remorse, she’s not quite having it, and looks up at him from under a curtain of hair. “I feel awful, but I don’t know if comparing our crimes is a road you want to go down.” “Well, what then? What’s next?” She winces. “Coffee and breakfast. Then we strategize. We’ve got a day before we meet with them again.” “T meant about us. Not just about work. What are we going to do about us?” He puts his hand over where he guesses hers is under the covers and gets a wrist. “Do you still want me to explain everything? That was the plan last night. I want to show you I can let you in.” She grimaces, then says, “More water.” He takes his hand off her wrist to hand her another bottle. She drinks half of it in a go, then wipes her mouth. “Yeah, we'll do that too. But not until after food and caffeine.” They sit at Oak Street Beach after breakfast. The wind has changed direction since the previous evening, a warmer summerish breeze from the south that has pacified the previous night’s chop. The air smells totally different. Katrina is caught in the stupor of her hangover. The time strikes him as good as any to tell her about transition. She regards him flatly, emotions ironed out of her affect by the weight of her headache. He tells her about cross-dressing as a kid. About trying to make it a part-time thing. About how his parents hadn’t spoken to him for a year when he finally went on hormones. How meek he had felt as a trans woman. The exhaustion of knowing you're vulnerable. Of seeing bizarre and nonsensical creatures on television and realizing that they were your reflection, as seen through the fun-house mirror of the world’s impressions of trans women. He tells her of the courage it took him, every day, just to go to the corner store—the preparations just to leave the house: put on your makeup, keep your shoulders back, walk with an imaginary book on your head, your hips under your spine but still swaying, and keep that emotional armor tight and polished. The cold stab of fear that hit when something tiny happened—say, a teenage boy follows you home from the store, and says appreciatively, “Hey, baby, where were you made?” A weird compliment of a catcall that hints how close the boy has come to the edge of figuring something true—but if you speak, he'll hear the real answer in the timbre of your voice. And then you fear the boy will get ashamed and then violent. This recitation of facts and memories, though they seem to captivate Katrina, has so far been totally unsatisfactory to Ames; he’s barely begun to skirt the contradiction of knowing he’s trans, yet having detransitioned. It’s like trying to explain one’s childhood in a matter of minutes. Everything sounds cliché. Everything gets boiled down to types.