Regret and responsibility resolved? Evaluating Ordonez and Connolly's (2000) conclusions

T. Connolly, L. D. Ordonez, and R. Coughlan (1997, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70, 73-85) argued, on the basis of 5 experiments, that regret need not be related to a sense of responsibility for the regretted outcome. We (M. Zeelenberg, W. W van Dijk, & A. S. R. Manstead, 1998, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 74, 254-272) showed in 2 experiments that this conclusion was premature, because it was based on an indirect measure of regret (i.e., overall happiness with the decision outcome). When regret was directly measured, the predicted effects of responsibility were found. L. D. Ordonez and T. Connolly (2000, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 81, 132-142) replicated our findings in 2 experiments. Based ore their findings they arrived at 4 conclusions. In this rejoinder we first discuss Ordonez and Connolly's new studies and we then discuss the validity of their 4 conclusions. (C) 2000 Academic Press.