Academic regrets are negative emotional experiences resulting from reflecting on past educational decisions or actions that students believe could have been better.
These regrets often involve missed opportunities, poor choices, or inadequate effort and can significantly influence students’ emotional well-being, motivation, and future academic behavior.
Ranellucci, J. (2025). Investigating the content and correlates of undergraduate students' academic regrets. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1436323. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1436323
Key Points
- Focus: The study explores the types and characteristics of academic regrets experienced by undergraduate students.
- Aims: The research aims to categorize students’ most severe academic regrets, understand their characteristics (intensity, intrusive thoughts, omissions or commissions), and explore their connections to motivational and emotional outcomes.
- Findings: The most frequent academic regrets were choosing the wrong class or program, insufficient effort or performance, and poor timing. Higher regret intensity correlated with negative emotional and motivational outcomes but was context-dependent.
- Implications: The findings underline the importance of addressing regrets in educational settings, as intense regrets can negatively influence student motivation and emotional well-being.
Rationale
Academic regrets are common yet under-researched within educational psychology, even though education-related regrets are among the most frequently reported life regrets.
Investigating these regrets can extend existing motivational and emotional theories like Control-Value Theory (CVT) and Situated Expectancy-Value Theory (SEVT), providing insights that could help students better navigate academic decisions and emotional outcomes.
Future research should further investigate the functional and maladaptive roles of academic regrets, examining specific mechanisms that help students handle such regrets effectively.
Method
Two quantitative studies were conducted, using surveys and qualitative content analysis (QCA).
Study 1 addressed general university experiences, while Study 2 focused on a specific computer science course context.
Procedure
- Students completed online questionnaires.
- Participants wrote about their most severe academic regret in an open-ended format.
- Participants rated their regret’s intensity, frequency of intrusive thoughts, and categorized regrets as omission or commission.
Sample
- Study 1: 152 participants (37% undergraduate, 61% graduate; Mean age: 26.85; predominantly female and from education and arts/sciences).
- Study 2: 128 undergraduate students (Mean age: 19.93; predominantly male and enrolled in computer science).
Measures
- Regret Intensity: Negative emotional experience intensity (embarrassment, sadness).
- Intrusive Thoughts: Frequency of unwanted, repetitive thoughts related to regret.
- Achievement Goals: Mastery and performance goals were assessed via standardized scales (PALS for Study 1, AGQ-R for Study 2).
- Expectancy-Value Constructs: Task expectancy, attainment value, intrinsic value, and utility value.
- Costs: Task effort cost, outside effort cost, loss of valued alternatives, emotional costs.
- Emotions: Positive and negative activated/deactivated emotions measured using adapted scales.
Statistical Measures
- Qualitative content analysis (QCA)
- Multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs), ANOVAs, chi-square tests
- Multiple regression analyses with Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons
Results
- Regret categories included wrong course/program, low effort, poor timing, missed opportunities, and lack of help-seeking.
- No differences in regret intensity or intrusive thoughts across regret types.
- Regrets of commission slightly more associated with intrusive thoughts in Study 1 and higher regret intensity in Study 2.
- Higher regret intensity predicted negative outcomes (emotional costs, negative emotions, performance-oriented achievement goals) in general academic contexts but not in the specific course context.
Insight
The study highlights that academic regrets significantly influence students’ motivational and emotional states.
The finding that regret intensity negatively impacts general academic experiences—but not specific course outcomes—illustrates the situational nature of motivational constructs, as suggested by SEVT.
These findings extend existing motivational theories by incorporating the underexplored role of affective memories.
Further research could examine how cultural or contextual factors influence regret intensity and students’ coping mechanisms.
Implications
Educational practitioners can use these insights to help students anticipate and manage regrets, improving academic decision-making and emotional regulation strategies.
Interventions might include advising students on course selection, maintaining engagement, and managing timing of academic decisions.
Policymakers could facilitate institutional supports such as counseling services focused explicitly on addressing students’ regrets.
Strengths
This study had several methodological strengths, including:
- Employed mixed qualitative and quantitative methods to capture detailed descriptions of regrets.
- Clearly identified distinct types of academic regrets.
- Contextual comparison between general and specific academic settings enhanced understanding of situational effects.
Limitations
This study also had several limitations, including:
- Cross-sectional design limits causal interpretations.
- Reliance on self-report measures could lead to bias or inaccuracies.
- Single-regret assessment approach might overlook multiple simultaneous regrets or context-sensitive shifts in regret severity.
Socratic Questions
- How might the results differ if students could report multiple academic regrets?
- What alternative methodologies could provide deeper insight into the effects of academic regret on student motivation?
- Could the cultural or institutional context influence how students perceive and cope with regrets?
- How can educators proactively address common academic regrets to enhance student well-being and academic outcomes?
- What are the ethical considerations of explicitly prompting students to reflect on potentially distressing academic regrets?
