For the young, regret over poor choices or missed opportunities can be a powerful carrot: It sparks reappraisal, accelerates learning and motivates change. In the old, regret appears to be no better than a stick - a stern reminder of poor choices, lost powers and our short time remaining on earth. So what's the key to happy old age? Don't lunge after the carrot and you won't get hit by the stick.
A new study finds that how we deal with foregone options and lost opportunities makes a huge difference in whether we will grow into happy seniors or succumb to late-life depression. Reporting their findings in Science magazine, German researchers found that in repetitive games of chance, when healthy young adults pay a price for a wrong decision, they shift their strategies accordingly in the next round. If their caution lost them a big payoff, they'll be bolder in the next game; if they risked too much and came up empty-handed, they'll become more cautious the next time around.
Their response to regret is to act on it. And their physiological response to that regret was active too: Their heartrates increased and their skin became clammy.
Like miniskirts, muscle shirts and long hair, what worked well for young people did not work so well after age 50. Among older subjects (a total of 40 adults with average age of 65), the 20 who had experienced late-life depression (defined as a first episode of depression after age 55) were far more likely to respond to regret in the same way a healthy young person would: Their hearts would pound, their hands would get moist, and they would adjust their playing strategy in the next game.
The emotionally healthy older adults, however, were like Zen masters in the face of regret: Whether they went all in and lost or held and lost had no bearing on how they played the next game. Their palms stayed dry and their hearts did not race.
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When researchers used fMRI scanners to peer into their subjects' brains as they played, they saw a similar pattern, in which the older depressed adults reacted to regret in the same way a healthy young person would. Among the mentally healthy young and the depressed old subjects, the brain's ventral striatum - a region associated with valuation of costs and rewards - became equally active under two conditions: when they gambled and lost everything, and when they learned that their choice had won them less than the maximum possible.
The ventral striatum in mentally healthy older subjects responded to outright loss of "winnings" with great activation. But it did not light up when the happy older adults discovered they might have won more; apparently, they were just happy to have come out ahead.
