"No one ever wished on their deathbed that they had spent more time in the office," goes the well-known cliché. A study by two psychology professors hints at what we might deeply regret at the end of our lives.
Professors Mike Morrison from the University of Illinois and Neal Roese from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Illinois came up with meaningful results. Their research is based on a random telephone survey they conducted among 370 Americans.
If this one is to be believed, relationship-based regret prevailed over education- or career-based regret. This means that a larger percentage of respondents regretted things related to relationships with others, close ones, than their career decisions.
As many as eighteen percent of respondents regretted a past romance or lost love, and only slightly less (16%) regretted not spending enough time with their family. Only 13 percent of the respondents regretted the wrong education, and only one percent less regretted the wrong career path. Even fewer people associated the regrets with either parenting or health.
All in all, as many as 43 percent of regrets were related to human relationships, whether it was a past romance, lost love,... on the other hand, career path or education regret represented an average of 35 percent.
Stable social relations
The results probably aren't much of a surprise. After all, relationships have been scientifically proven to affect our health and well-being, contributing to the reduction of depression and heart disease. Additionally, friends and family make us feel happier and more fulfilled.
“People crave strong, stable social relationships and are unhappy when they don't have them; regret embodies this principle,” the study authors wrote.
