While previous studies on post-decisional regret have exclusively focused on externally provided options, the present study is the first to examine post-decisional regret in situations with self-generated options. Applying a metacognitive perspective, we predicted that a large option set-size leads to less post-decisional regret than a small option set-size. This hypothesis is in contrast to the classic choice overload effect which has been reported for externally provided options. Furthermore, we hypothesized that explicitly generating options results in less post-decisional regret than not doing so. We used a field experimental design to test our two hypotheses. On a Sunday morning, participants were asked to generate either three or six options for what they could do during the afternoon and to select one of these options. In a control condition, participants were not instructed to generate options. On Sunday evening, participants indicated how much they regretted not having done something else. Our results provide support for both hypotheses.

尽管先前关于决策后遗憾的研究仅专注于外部提供的选项，但本研究是第一个研究具有自生选项的情况下决策后遗憾的研究。应用元认知的观点，我们预测，与小选择集大小相比，大选择集大小导致更少的决策后悔。该假设与经典选择过载效应相反，经典选择过载效应已针对外部提供的选项进行了报道。此外，我们假设显式生成选项所产生的后决定后悔要比不这样做少。我们使用现场实验设计来检验我们的两个假设。在周日的早晨，参与者被要求针对他们下午的活动生成三个或六个选项，并从中选择一个。在控制条件下，不指示参与者生成选项。在周日晚上，参与者表示很遗憾自己没有做其他事情。我们的结果为这两种假设提供了支持。