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Sexual Regret

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Synonyms

Action regret; Inaction regret; Negative postcoital emotions; Rumination

Definition

Regret is a counterfactual cognitive-emotional response to past events, where one in hindsight wishes the past had been different. Regret comes in two forms: inaction regret, which is the regret of not having acted when one had the chance and missed out on what proved in hindsight to be an attractive opportunity, and action regret, which is the regret of having done something that in hindsight proved to be less positive than one assumed at the time of acting. Casual sex regret is therefore the specific regret of either having had casual sex or passing up an opportunity for having casual sex.

Introduction

Research on regret finds that sex differences are domain specific. The major sex difference in regret is for romantic relationships and is not present for other domains such as parental relationships, friendships, or academic achievement (Roese et al. 2006). In two studies involving romantic...

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Correspondence to Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair .

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© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

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Kennair, L.E.O., Bendixen, M. (2018). Sexual Regret. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3835-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3835-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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