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 experime nts, that regret need not be related to a sense of responsibility for the r egretted outcome. We (M. Zeelenberg, W. W van Dijk, & A. S. R. Manstead, 19 98, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 74, 254-272) show ed in 2 experiments that this conclusion was premature, because it was base d on an indirect measure of regret (i.e., overall happiness with the decisi on outcome). When regret was directly measured, the predicted effects of re sponsibility were found. L. D. Ordonez and T. Connolly (2000, Organizationa l Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 81, 132-142) replicated our findin gs 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 Pre ss.