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The research: Luis F. Martinez of the Nova School of Business and Economics and his research partner, Marcel Zeelenberg of Tilburg University, asked people to play a classic economic game in which two partners transfer money back and forth. The amount exchanged indicates their level of trust. Before playing, some subjects were primed to feel regret; others were primed to feel disappointment. A third group wasn’t primed and served as a control. Across three experiments, regretful subjects transferred less money and therefore showed less trust than the other groups. Disappointed subjects sent the largest sums, displaying significantly more trust.
研究：诺瓦经济工商学院路易斯·马丁内斯（Luis F. Martinez）及蒂尔堡大学的研究伙伴马塞尔·齐林伯格（Marcel Zeelenberg)请受试者玩一个经典经济学游戏。在游戏中，两个伙伴相互给对方转账，而转账钱数反映彼此之间的信任程度。在玩游戏前，研究者让一些受试者感到后悔，让另一组人感到失望，对作为对照组的第三组则没有做任何事。在3组实验结果中，后悔的受试者转的钱较少，他们表现出的信任低于其他组。失望的受试者转出的钱最多，说明他们对同伴的信任远高于其他组。
The challenge: Does being let down really cause you to have a more positive attitude toward others? Is disappointment the key to collaboration?
挑战：你会因失望而对他人持更正面的看法吗？失望是协作的关键吗？
Martinez: Going in, we weren’t sure what would happen. We knew negative emotions could sometimes have positive social implications. However, we saw a pretty clear effect: Disappointment increased the trust of the person handing over the money, and this in turn led the person getting the money to be more trusting. Regret did the opposite. Trust went down on both sides.
马丁内斯：开始我们不确定将会发生什么。我们知道负面情绪有时可能有积极的社交效应。但我们看到一个十分明显的效应：失望增强了转账者的信任感，于是收钱的人也变得更相信对方。后悔有截然相反的效果：转账双方对彼此的信任都减少了。
HBR: How did you measure trust?
We used a cooperative game involving two players. The first player starts with some amount of money, say 20 euros, and decides how much of it to send to a randomly chosen partner. Then the second player decides how much of that money to send back to the first player. In the first move, people who trust their partners to reciprocate will send higher amounts; in the response, more money signals a greater desire to be seen as trustworthy.
HBR：你如何测量信任感？
我们组织了一个需要两个人合作的游戏，先给第一个玩家一些钱，比如20欧元，然后让他决定转多少钱给一个随机抽选的伙伴。接下来第二个玩家要决定还多少钱给第一个人。在第一步中，相信伙伴会将钱转回的人可能转出更多钱；在对他的回应中，第二个人转回的钱数多少表明了他有多想被视为可信赖的人。
HBR：What did you do to make participants feel regret and disappointment?
In the first two tests, we asked people to read sentences containing words associated with regret (like “mistake,” “self-blame,” and “poor choice”) or disappointment (“unexpected,” “powerless,” and “bad luck”). This is a standard approach. It’s called implicit emotional induction because participants don’t realize what emotion the sentences are evoking. But it’s less precise than other methods, so in the third experiment we opted for an autobiographical-recall approach, in which we asked people to write about a recent time they’d felt regret or disappointment. They knew, explicitly, that they were experiencing the assigned emotion. This procedure is widely used in emotional research, and it’s probably one of the most effective ways to prime people.
HBR：你们做了什么让受试者感到后悔和失望？
在前两次测试中，我们请受试者读几个句子。句子里有勾起后悔情绪的字眼，比如“错误”、“自责”和“不明智的选择”，或有引发失望的字眼，如“出乎意料”、“无能为力”和“运气不佳”。这是个标准方法，叫做内隐情绪诱导法，因为受试者意识不到这些句子会激发何种情绪。但这种方法不太精确，所以在第三次实验中，我们选择自传式回忆法，让受试者写下最近他们感到后悔或失望的时间点。他们清楚地知道自己正在感受指定的情绪。此法在情绪研究中被广泛应用，而且可能是让受试者做好实验准备的最有效方法之一。
HBR：Hold on—aren’t regret and disappointment pretty comparable?
Well, the emotions are in some ways similar. They both involve counterfactual thinking: When you feel either one, you’re comparing what is with what might have been. Historically, researchers have lumped them together, because a lot of research has evaluated emotions solely by valence—basically, whether an emotion is positive or negative. Regret and disappointment were among the emotional states combined under the label “negatively valenced emotion.” They weren’t examined much individually.
HBR：等一下——后悔和失望的感觉不是很像吗？
这两种情绪从某些方面来看的确相似。两者都涉及反事实思考：你感受任一种情绪时，都在比较现状和可能发生但却没发生的情况。过去研究人员将两者混为一谈，因为很多研究评估情绪时只依据其性质——大致界定某种情绪是正面的还是负面的。后悔和失望都属于“负面情绪”标签下的情绪状态，各自没有得到多少单独研究。
However, there are real distinctions between the two. We own regret in a way that we don’t own disappointment. Regret is about our bad decisions—things we believe we’ve done wrong. We feel personally at fault for the bad outcome. That makes us more cautious, and we’ll try to avoid mistakes in the future. In contrast, we often don’t have direct control over disappointing situations. We may not feel at fault. Feeling powerless to affect the bad result is part of the emotion. If your favorite soccer team loses a big match, your expectations and hopes aren’t met. You know it isn’t really your fault, but it still upsets you. That’s disappointment.
然而，后悔和失望之间确有不同。我们感到后悔时不会感到失望。后悔与我们糟糕的决定有关——我们觉得自己做错了什么事，认为自己造成了不良后果。这让我们更谨慎，而且之后会尽量避免再犯错。相比之下，令人失望的局面往往是我们无法直接控制的。我们可能不认为自己负有责任。无力改变不良后果是失望的一部分。如果你最喜欢的足球队输了一场重要比赛，你的期望和希望都落空了。你知道这真的不是你的错，但仍会非常难过。这就是失望。
HBR：But why do these distinctions make such a big difference in trust?
We have a pretty good idea about the mechanisms behind regret. As I said, previous research has shown that it typically makes people take fewer risks. In our study it appears that regretful people anticipated feeling more regret, and to avoid that, they became more cautious, which in turn meant that trust got shut out.Our theory for disappointment isn’t as robust; we’re still examining it. There may be a moral component involved. Another possibility is that with disappointment, people try to compensate for their powerlessness: “Because I couldn’t do anything to improve that thing, I’ll focus on doing this thing better instead.”
HBR：但为什么这些差异对信任的影响如此不同呢？
我们十分清楚后悔背后的机制。如上所述，之前的研究表明，后悔通常让人少冒风险。在我们的研究中，后悔的人预感自己会更后悔，为了避免这种情况，他们变得更谨慎，不再信任他人。我们针对失望的理论尚不充分，仍在检验中。这里面涉及道德问题。另一可能性是人们感到失望后，出于无力感寻找慰藉：“因为我无法改善那件事，我只能用心做好这件事。”
HBR：If I want my boss to trust me with an important project, should I get my coworkers to disappoint her first?
Maybe—but probably not. Reality is much more complex than a game with limited variables. But these emotions clearly do have real-world implications. For instance, Professor Zeelenberg did a study comparing regret and disappointment in customers of internet service providers. His team found that people who regretted their choice of provider usually changed to another one, whereas disappointed participants did not change even though they knew they had bad service. They engaged in negative word of mouth. They kept complaining and complaining, but they did not switch providers.
HBR：如果我想让老板放心交给我一个重要项目，我应该先让其他同事刺激她，让她失望吗？
也许，但也可能不用。现实比只有几个变量的游戏复杂多了。但这些情绪显然能为现实生活带来启迪。比如齐林伯格教授的研究，将网络服务供应商客户的后悔和失望经历进行了对比。他的团队发现，对自己的供应商选择感到后悔的人通常会换一个供应商，而失望的受试者却没有更换，虽然他们知道自己得到的服务不好。他们大吐苦水，不停抱怨，但却没有更改供应商。
HBR：Disappointing your customers is a sound customer-retention strategy?
Well, in a way. If a company knows that it’s going to make some people unhappy, it should aim for disappointed consumers over regretful ones. Sure, disappointed consumers might complain—and that might be pretty negative in terms of, say, online reputation—but they won’t change their consumption behavior. Effectively, the company gets a second chance. And this is just one example; these two emotions might have different implications for managerial issues and even for negotiations.
HBR：让你的客户失望是可靠的客户保留战略吗？
在某种程度上是吧。如果公司清楚它将使一些客户不满意，那么应当让客户失望，而非后悔。当然，失望的客户可能抱怨，这样可能带来负面影响，比如在网络上损害公司名誉，但这些客户不会改变消费行为，实际上是给了公司第二次机会。这仅是一个例子；两种情绪也许在管理乃至谈判层面上还有不同效应。
HBR：We’ve run several articles in the past about the value of happiness and positivity in motivation. It sounds as if you’re saying those aren’t as important as some people think.
It’s a question of circumstance. This study supports what we already know: that many negative emotions, such as shame, guilt, and envy, have some positive component. For example, displaying anger can be good in negotiations. And we cannot show clearly that feeling good always improves our decisions. Now, I’m not saying we all should feel negative and unhappy. We should absolutely try to induce positive emotions in people, because feeling better has many implications aside from productivity! But maybe it’s OK if we aren’t happy all the time.
HBR：我们过去刊登过几篇关于幸福感价值和激励积极性的文章。现在听你说的，好像这些事没有一些人想象中那么重要。
这要看情况。这一研究支持了我们已知的事情：很多类似羞耻、罪恶和嫉妒的负面情绪都有一些积极因素。举例来说，表现恼怒有利于谈判。我们也不能明确地说，感觉良好总能提高决定质量。现在我的意思不是说我们都应感到不开心、抱有负面情绪。我们当然应该激发人们的正面情绪，因为除了提高生产力外，积极乐观还有其他很多好的影响。但如果我们不总是那么开心，可能也没关系。
HBR：Where will you take this research next?
I think that negative emotions are richer in content than positive ones, so that’s where I’ll continue to focus. One thing I want to do is make distinctions among the effects of negative emotions across economic games that represent very different situations and interactions. For instance, when we tested regret and disappointment with an ultimatum game, which is quite individualistic and doesn’t involve reciprocation, we found that regret led to more pro-social behavior, which is the opposite of what happened in the trust experiments.
HBR：接下来你如何扩展你的研究？
我认为，负面情绪比正面情绪内容更丰富，所以我会继续关注这方面。我想做的一件事是，在展现不同情景和互动的经济学游戏中，找出多种负面情绪效应的差异。比如最后通牒博弈是个较个人主义的、没有互动的游戏，我们用这个游戏测试后悔和失望时，发现后悔诱发更亲社会的行为，这一结果与信任实验的结果完全相反。
HBR：I’m not disappointed by this interview. I don’t regret doing it.
I trust your readers won’t regret it, either.
HBR：这个采访没有让我失望。我不觉得后悔。
我相信你的读者也不会后悔。
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